The lowland forest of El Impenetrable National Park in northern Argentina sprawls across the hot, swampy green of the Gran Chaco biome, home to South America’s largest mammals and thousands of plant species. It’s a critical conservation unit for the protection of one of the planet’s most deforested ecosystems, yet it’s missing an important resident: […]
Tag: Giant Otter
World Otter Day – Join the Otter Takeover
IOSF WORLD OTTER DAY takes place each year on the last Wednesday in May and the aim is to draw attention to the 13 species of otter – all of them are listed in the IUCN Red List and populations of 12 of them are still declining. This includes the Eurasian otter which is the […]
Brazil Pantanal Day #3 – Fish Fest
Another great day in the Pantanal, despite the increasing mosquito load. The morning boat trip with Pantanal Nature produced another Jaguar encounter, our fifth in total. We intercepted a huge male swimming across the river, just too late before it reached the shore and disappeared promptly into the forest: Again we had breathtaking experiences with […]
Brazil Pantanal day #2
Another fantastic day here in the Pantanal with Panthera and Pantanal Nature. We went out on the boat in the morning and in the afternoon. We had a breathtaking Jaguar encounter with a wild, un-habituated male. We followed him from a distance for a while. He pounced on a Cayman but missed. Wow. We also […]
Video: Two Hungry Jaguars Are No Match for This Plucky Otter
PORTE JOFRE, PANTANAL, BRAZIL – On a particularly hot afternoon last October, two jaguar sisters named Medrosa and Jaju went down to the river to drink. But before they had reached the waters of the Corixo Negro, a giant otter loudly voiced its displeasure. A top predator, the river otter is known to some local […]
POLL: Should we give up half of the Earth to wildlife?
The orangutan is one of our planet’s most distinctive and intelligent creatures. It has been observed using primitive tools, such as the branch of a tree, to hunt food, and is capable of complex social behaviour. Orangutans also played a special role in humanity’s own intellectual history when, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin and […]
Wildlife catastrophe at Amazon dam a warning for future Tapajós dams
When the Balbina Dam was completed in 1986, it flooded primary forest in the state of Amazonas along Brazil’s Uatumã River, forming a massive reservoir speckled by 3,546 flood-induced islands. In 1990, the Reserva Biológica (REBIO) do Uatumã was established, protecting the entire 443,700 hectare (109,6427 acre) reservoir, dubbed Balbina Lake, along with the adjacent […]
‘River wolves’ recover in Peruvian park, but still remain threatened inside and out (photos)
This highly intelligent, deeply social, and simply charming freshwater predator almost vanished entirely due to a relentless fur trade in the 20th Century. But decades after the trade in giant river otter pelts was outlawed, the species is making a comeback—at least in well-managed protected areas. A new study in PLOS ONE finds that the […]