Spending Time Up Close with these Big Cats in the Pantanal

Written By: Gail Clifford | Published By: GoNoMad | November 27, 2021

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You’ve heard of the Big Five: lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape Buffalo. You don’t find jaguars on the list since they’re the leopard equivalent in the Americas. But hunting them to shoot, with a camera, of course, can be just as difficult.

Enter the Pantanal. South of the Amazon Rain Forest

The Pantanal, encompassing the world’s largest tropical wetland area, located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, south of the Amazon Rain Forest extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay.

Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, thousands of species thrive there, like jaguars, anaconda, red-footed tortoises, toucans, the imperiled hyacinth macaw, giant river otter, and animals you’ve likely never heard of, caiman and capybara.

The majestic jaguar is considered an umbrella species, upon whose shoulders sit the awesome responsibility of protecting the habitat from extinction, simply by continuing to exist.

It’s not easy to get there – flights from the US to Brazil’s Sao Paulo and then to Cuiaba, a city of about 3 million people.

He learned quickly that saving the birds in this region would ultimately require saving the jaguars.

He built an entire ecotourism industry around tourists viewing rather than shooting jaguars. It helps that guns are generally illegal in Brazil since the 1960s.