2024-02-08 19:50:43
Lto San Alonso Island It is half an hour by boat from the San Nicolás portal, one of the many tourist accesses to the Iberá National Park, a protected area of 158,000 hectares in the heart of the estuaries. This is where Fundación Rewilding Argentina carries out its reintroduction projects of extinct species such as the jaguar and the giant otter. He yaguareté It is the largest feline in America and one of the most endangered mammals in Argentina, of which only about 250 copies remain in the entire country. In Corrientes the species had disappeared 70 years ago, until the first specimens were released in January 2021, a female with two cubs.
“So far, nine animals have been released, five adults and four cubs, and today there are 21 jaguars present in Iberá, given that they have managed to reproduce successfully.””explains Magali Longo, conservation coordinator on San Alonso Island, where the CRY (Yaguareté Reintroduction Center) has operated since 2012. “The five released adults have monitoring collar which is changed every three or five years, depending on the life of the battery. This change is made with a capture method, for which camera traps are first used to detect the paths that the animal most frequents; Once this information is available, it is captured with a snare trap and then a numbing dart is applied, a task for which there is always a veterinarian present.”
Los monitoring to loose animals are carried out constant and the objective of species reintroduction projects is guarantee that the population of released animals is self-sustaining and replicate the form of life prior to human intervention, which was what led them to extinction due to modification of their habitat, the loss of their prey and hunting.
Another great rewilding work that is carried out in San Alonso is with the giant otter or choker wolf, what is the species of otter biggest in the world (can reach up to 1.8 m in length) and that It has been extinct in our country for 40 years.. Most of this animal’s diet is made up of fish, although it may include crustaceans, mollusks and terrestrial vertebrates such as sub-adult alligators, birds or rodents. Due to its dietary characteristics, this carnivore It is usually a top predator in food chains of the water courses where it lives, being a key species in these ecosystems.
He job with the otter started in 2019 and one of the biggest challenges was building the corrals, since they have the peculiarity of being half in the water and half on land. Once that obstacle was overcome, another came: the great drought of the last three years and the fires, which forced move the animals to safety. Today there are already three family groups of otters living in the pens and soon there will be five. It is estimated that release could be made at the end of this 2024
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