In Brazil’s tropical wetlands, ecotourism has forged an uneasy truce between cattle farmers and their old enemies
The hot, humid air greets me as I step out of Cuiaba’s airport, in Brazil’s western Mato Grosso state. I grapple to get my bearings in the sauna-like atmosphere and dive into the first taxi. Marcus Silva, the middle-aged, sturdy driver, wants to know what brings me to the area. “I’m assuming the Pantanal, am I right?” he asks. It’s a fair guess. The world’s largest tropical wetlands draw thousands of tourists every year to admire their flooded plains, home to toucans, macaws, ibis, caimans, capybaras and the region’s crown jewel: jaguars. Close, but not quite, I tell Marcus. “You’re reporting on the conflict between jaguars and cattle ranchers? Now that’s a polemical topic,” he chuckles, amused at the idea of a foreigner approaching locals to talk about such a sensitive issue. But his smile fades as he recalls the anger of ranchers when jaguars feast on their livestock. “It’s a problem,” he said.
The Pantanal, which means “great swamp” in Portuguese, is bigger than England. Most of its 42 million acres are in Brazil, but it also spills into Bolivia and Paraguay. Covered by dense, low-forested savannah and a grassland swamp fed by tributaries of the Paraguay River and seasonal floods, it is a biodiversity hotspot. The abundance of prey makes it the perfect habitat for jaguars. The Pantanal is also a hub of economic activity. Around 95 per cent is under private ownership, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Cattle roam freely in unfenced private ranches, sharing the same habitat as all the other animals, including jaguars. Coexistence between the latter and Pantaneiros, as cattle ranchers in the region are known, is tense.
Strained relations between humans and wildlife are far from unique to the area. When human settlements encroach on wildlife habitat, issues such as livestock predation arise, as can competition for resources. Faced with a rapidly deteriorating natural world, calls for methods to lessen hostility have become more urgent. This is especially the case when the species are already under threat. The panthera onca is classified as a “near threatened” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Killing them is a crime in Brazil. It can lead to hefty fines, and even prison. But despite its illegality, a quick Google search brings up dozens of stories of hunted jaguars, their bodies found maimed and decomposing.
Ecotourism is one way to lessen these tensions between humans and wildlife. It’s been growing in the Pantanal, reflecting a broader trend worldwide. As the climate crisis and biodiversity loss accelerate, travellers are increasingly seeking to minimise the negative impact of tourism by giving back to unique natural environments, and supporting threatened or near-threatened species like the jaguar. While Africa is the place to see lions, cheetahs and leopards, word is increasingly getting around that Brazil’s Pantanal is where one can spot a jaguar. A 2017 study from the Federal University of Mato Grosso and the University of East Anglia estimated that the jaguar tourism economy generated up to 56 times more income annually than the financial losses inflicted on livestock farmers when jaguars feed on cattle. And the industry has grown significantly in the last seven years.
Who benefits?
I go to meet João Losano Eubank Campos Júnior, whose blue eyes dart nervously around the room as we talk. He is 48 years old and one of the owners of the Piuval cattle ranch located near the town of Poconé. Like many in the region he has German heritage, his ancestors attracted to the country after it gained independence in the 19th century. Today, approximately 2,000 cows wander around Piuval’s 7,000 hectares of plains and forests. So do around half a dozen jaguars. New-born calves, in particular, are easy prey. “I grew up with the idea that you have to kill jaguars because they eat the cattle – our only source of income,” he said. But then his father started welcoming guests onto the family farm back in 1989. He was one of the first cattle ranchers to explore this new avenue of income. At the time, there was no infrastructure to put up visitors. Campos Júnior recalls being kicked out of his bedroom as a child to make room for the foreigners. “I thought they wanted to see birds. I didn’t know they wanted to see jaguars,” said Campos Júnior. Today, Piuval is known as one of the best places to spot jaguars in the region, and the profits are increasing each year.
Today there are many guesthouses and eco-lodges, with around a dozen along the Transpantaneira, one of the main roads that crosses the Pantanal. While some have been set up on cattle ranches as a side business, others were built specifically to cater for eco-tourists. Aymara Lodge is one of these, built in 2019. When I visit the lodge I meet a Canadian couple in their 70s. “We made a 12,000-kilometre trip to see jaguars,” Ela Piaseczny tells me, her eyes twinkling. Her husband tells me that on weekends they like to hike, canoe or kayak back home in Vancouver, Canada, and that this love of the outdoors is “what drives us to come to places like where we are now, hoping to see it preserved and available for next generations to come”.
Their enthusiasm is contagious and I awake the next morning brimming with excitement. The sun is yet to rise when I meet up with Benedito Almeida dos Santos, a 23-year-old guide with a face framed with dark curls. I climb into the open-topped jeep, wrapped in a raincoat in a fruitless effort to keep the mosquitoes at bay. As we ride down the dirt track in the early morning mist, dos Santos says to keep an eye out for El Patrón, a dominant male jaguar believed to weigh over 100 kg. I take the instruction to heart, scanning the surroundings relentlessly. Unfortunately, that morning El Patrón evades us. “I last saw him 10 days ago, he crossed right in front of us,” dos Santos tells me. The image of the jaguar has changed since he was a child, he says. “Before, if you were to speak with a local senhorzinho (elderly man) about jaguars, he would say you have to kill that animal. But now if you spoke with him, he would say gringos (foreigners) are coming to see them, we shouldn’t kill them.”
But while ecotourism can improve relations between jaguars and the ranchers who benefit, conservationists warn that it is not a silver bullet. The profits can often be unevenly distributed, with more of the income going to locals who own land in the right locations, or who possess the kinds of skills needed to work in the tourist economy. In the Pantanal, many cattle ranches are located too far from the few roads that cross the biodiversity hotspot and are limited by a lack of infrastructure. That disparity creates resentment. “I think a lot about my neighbours,” Campo Júnior tells me, his voice straining. “It’s not fair that I am earning lots of money whilst they are losing income to jaguars. That’s a problem, and I don’t want that. I’m seen in the village as a traitor.” Businesses that benefit from tourism have even been accused of breeding jaguars – an allegation that they strongly deny.
However, the behaviour of the animals does seem to have changed. Porto Jofre is one of the most popular places to spot jaguars, at the end of the Transpantaneira. Jeeps zoom up and down the potholed, muddy road, dotted with wooden bridges. Dozens of boats await upon arrival to take eager visitors to the riverbanks where jaguars can almost always be sighted. Aymara Lodge took 93 groups of tourists to Porto Jofre last year, and spotted jaguars on 92 of them. “Many of the adult jaguars today were cubs when boats and tourists began to arrive and are used to them,” said dos Santos, the guide. This may be good for the tourists, but wildlife experts warn of the dangers of jaguars getting too comfortable with the presence of humans. Although it’s illegal, some people still kill the animals, and fear is a natural reaction intended to keep them safe. Ecotourism more generally runs the risk of unsettling long-established relationships between animals and humankind, potentially creating unforeseen consequences.
The climate threat
Wildlife, however, is being endangered by a much more existential threat. Incentivising locals to preserve the environment is one tool in the broader fight against climate change and one means with which to manage its consequences. Climate change has already made the Pantanal hotter and drier. Wildfires are a common natural phenomenon in the area, but in recent years these have increased. In 2020, flames ravaged around a third of the Pantanal and affected 45 per cent of the estimated jaguar population, according to a 2022 study. Those fires were considered the worst in the region’s history and killed 17 million vertebrates. Jaguars perished in the flames, while others faced displacement, hunger and dehydration.
This year, the number of blazes also broke records. The fires started early, following prolonged drought, combined with high temperatures and low rainfall. They didn’t let up, and social media has been flooded with images of skies reddened by fire or grayed by smoke, flames encroaching roads, and charred jaguar cubs.
In the next few decades, Brazil’s centre-west region, where the Pantanal is located, is expected to become hotter while its southern region turns rainier. Júlio Cesar de Souza, a biology professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, believes that the lack of rain and increase in fires are leading to greater awareness of the need to preserve the Pantanal. “People are realising that if we don’t do our homework, if we don’t conserve the fauna and flora, in the future we may no longer have water in the Pantanal,” he says. “Without water, the farmer will eat sand.” In December, Mato Grosso do Sul’s state parliament sanctioned the “Pantanal law”, which obliges rural properties to protect 50 per cent of areas covered with forest or with tropical savannah. Environmentalists hope it will help tackle soaring deforestation rates, which grew by 25 per cent in Mato Grosso between 2016–2022 compared to 2009–2015, according to Brazil’s space research institute. A drier and hotter Pantanal makes the production of beef even more challenging, adding to traditional Pantaneiros’ woes and leading some farmers to abandon their ranches.
For many, cattle farming is synonymous with destruction of the environment, particularly in the Amazon rainforest, where trees are felled to make way for cows. About a third of human-caused methane emissions come from livestock, mostly from the bovine burps of beef and dairy cattle. Illegal deforestation resulting from cattle farming is also a problem in the Pantanal, where large cattle farms have been slapped with fines for hacking away at the biome’s unique vegetation. But while fewer cattle ranches would be better for the environment, some say it is a less harmful form of industry for the Pantanal than others. A 2021 study published in the Natural Sciences journal of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, a Brazilian research institute, showed that, as long as the native vegetation is maintained on a large scale, cattle ranching more closely aligns with the objectives of conserving the biome than mining, charcoal production or the construction of hydroelectric dams, all which have all increased in past decades. This is partly because without cattle grazing on the grass and keeping it trimmed, fires spread even faster.
“We need public policies that create an integrated production system for wildlife conservation and livestock production,” says Souza, the biology professor. One solution he proposes is the creation of large reserves linked by ecological corridors where jaguars and others can move around freely. Roberto Klabin agrees that integration is the best approach. He’s an environmentalist and owner of Caiman, a site that combines cattle ranching with ecotourism and conservation activities. Of its 53,000 hectares, 18,000 are dedicated to rewilding projects. “We have influence in an area that is very, very large and we have created a model that can be implemented in other areas of the Pantanal, or even in other areas of Brazil,” he said.
Finding solutions
In April, Brazil’s Congress put forward a bill intended to further discourage farmers from killing the predators, while also lessening the damage caused when they lose their livestock. If approved by parliament, it would make the killing of jaguars a “serious” environmental crime. The current penalty is a significant fine and jail time up to a year, but changing the definition might involve increasing the penalty. Ranchers meanwhile would be compensated at the market value of their animal.
Other organisations are taking the matter into their own hands. Paul Raad, a 34-year-old originally from Uruguay, oversees the Human-Wildlife Coexistence project, run by the animal welfare NGO Ampara in partnership with the São Paulo State University. Its aim is to protect the livestock in the Pantanal. “If I protect the cattle, I’m protecting the jaguar,” the freckled, curly-haired veterinarian explains, as we drive past fields where herons mix with white cattle with horns. A storm is brewing overhead and the partly flooded plains reflect the darkening sky.
We jump out of the jeep, just as the rain gathers pace. “This area is called the maternity ward, it’s where we bring cows that are about to give birth,” Raad says, pointing to a delimited area of around half a hectare. Jaguars had worked out that they could easily pick up calves here, so Raad equipped it with fences. At night-time when pregnant cows and calves are locked in, an electric current runs through two cables 25cm and 75cm off the ground. “Electrical confinement is a way of saying – ‘OK, you’ve got a solution, so you don’t kill the jaguar any more,’” Raad tells me. No jaguar has ever eaten a calf when the electric fence was working: the system has a 100 per cent success rate.
Jaguars face a myriad of threats resulting from humans, including angry cattle ranchers and an accelerating climate crisis which threatens their habitat. Ultimately protecting every species in the Pantanal is essential, but jaguars play a particularly crucial ecological role at the top of the food chain. Preserving the Pantanal requires collaboration with cattle ranchers, offering them opportunities that align with conservation goals. Ecotourism, despite its limits, is an important way forward – not only for the Pantanal, but for the future of our wildlife, and for some of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.
This article is from New Humanist’s winter 2024 issue. Subscribe now.