Restoring waterways for jaguars in the Peruvian Amazon

Madre de Dios, a region in southeastern Peru known as the country’s biodiversity capital, covers 19.5 million acres of forest—12% of the Peruvian Amazon—and is home to endangered species like the jaguar. Despite its rich ecosystems and vast network of rivers and lagoons, the region faces increasing threats from prolonged dry seasons, droughts, fires, and climate change.

These pressures weaken the Amazon’s resilience to climate stressors and degrade water sources for wildlife and communities. For decades, both people and wildlife have relied on the area’s streams for water, and with intensive use, deforestation, and fires, these riparian zones have become progressively degraded. Furthermore, water scarcity in the region has intensified conflicts among people, livestock, and wildlife, especially in ranching areas where competition for water drives negative interactions with jaguars.

To address these challenges, WWF Peru and the Wildlife Adaptation Innovation Fund created three climate-smart and conflict-free “safe zones” for jaguars to access water sources that are protected from livestock intrusion and damage. The sites for these safe zones were selected because they were adjacent to known jaguar hotspots, were traversed by over 39.5 acres of streams, have high wildlife activity from other species like tapirs, deer, peccaries, howler monkeys, and ocelots, and were in need of riparian restoration due to drought, fires, and degradation from livestock. The safe zones, which cover 75.5 acres of riparian area, successfully safeguarded and restored critical water sources for jaguars and other wildlife, increasing water availability and improving habitats.