Tania it has three legs. She lost one of hers when she was a cub, the victim of a tiger that attacked her from an adjoining cage at the Batán zoo, in the southwest of Buenos Aires. It was a problem between relatives. Tania It looks like an African tigress, but it is a yaguareté (“big cat” in the Guarani language), its American equivalent.
Tania is a survivor. She overcame the attack and then the lockdown. For two years he has lived on San Alonso Island, in the heart of the Iberá National Park (“shining waters” in Guaraní), 700,000 hectares of wetlands fed only by rainwater in the province of Corrientes (800 kilometers northeast from Buenos Aires). Tania crossed paths on the island with Chiqui, a male from Paraguay, and became a mother. Her two babies, Mbarete and AramiThey are the advance guard of the return of the jaguar to those virgin swamps, where it disappeared 70 years ago as a victim of hunting. reinsertion of Mbarete, Arami and three other adult specimens crown seven years of watchmaking work carried out by Rewilding Argentina, a foundation that works to rescue endangered species.
Argentina has been hostile to the jaguar. There are barely 200 left in Misiones, a jungle province that borders Brazil and Paraguay. In the Iberá marshlands, south of Misiones, the jaguar became extinct in the 1950s, a victim of ranchers who feared for their cows and hunters avid for fur. There were then about 1,000 copies. “At the peak of the demand for skins, Europe paid up to 10,000 dollars per animal hunted in the Iberá,” says the biologist and executive director of Rewilding Argentina, Sofía Heinonen.
Rewilding Argentina is heir to CLT Argentina, an environmental organization created by the American philanthropist Douglas Tompkins, who amassed a great fortune thanks to brands such as North Face and Esprit. In December 2015, Tompinks died in a canoeing (rowing sport) accident in Chile and the foundation was left in the hands of his wife, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins. It was she who fulfilled Douglas’s dream: to restore and donate more than a million hectares of natural treasures to the states of Argentina and Chile, which, in return, had to convert them into protected areas. Last year, Iberá added 150,000 hectares purchased by Tompkins. In these lands, the cradle of unsurpassed natural wealth, where lagoons, reservoirs, palm groves, forests and grasslands converge, the jaguars await their return to natural life.
The reinsertion of a species in a new habitat is a methodical work, divided into laboratory phases. Biologists like Heinonen and Sebastián Di Martino, conservation director of the Rewilding Argentina project, take care of that. The process begins with specimens in captivity that will act as breeders, such as Tania and Chiqui. Those jaguars will never be wild, but their young can be. In phase two, the pups grow up in pens without contact with humans. They are monitored by cameras and fed live prey, such as capybaras or deer. “The important thing is that they don’t associate man with anything good, that’s why they shouldn’t see when we put their food in the pen,” explains Di Martino.
In phase two, work is also carried out on specimens that were wild and for some reason ceased to be so. On San Alonso Island there are three jaguars that have arrived from Brazil, two females and one male, who are in the process of readjusting to freedom. One of them is Jatobazinho, a wild male that appeared in September north of Corumbá dehydrated and malnourished. The day EL PAÍS visited the monitoring center for the corrals on San Alonso Island, Jatobazinho he slept peacefully under a wooden shed hidden in some bushes, after a hearty lunch.
The biologists from Rewilding Argentina are now ready to start phase three: the five jaguars will be released in the coming months in a 30-hectare corral where they will have to fend for themselves, without human help. Then the final liberation will come. Jatobazinho will be “the only free male, and the idea is that he will cross paths with Juruna and Mariua”, two females that together with the puppies of Tania they form the family that will once again populate Iberá, says Di Martino.
The return of the jaguar will restore balance to the wetland, today saturated with capybaras, monkeys and alligators (crocodiles), animals that have lost their natural predator. “The restoration of the top predator will allow the richness and diversity of the environment to be recomposed and will ensure genetic continuity throughout the country,” says Hainonen. Reintegration, however, is not the main challenge. If the conditions that 70 years ago caused the extinction of the jaguar in Iberá do not change, the offspring of Tania and Chiqui will live very little.
“We must ensure that people have a positive economic perception of the jaguar. If it’s a good thing, it won’t kill it,” explains Hainonen. The solution is in ecotourism. The Argentine foundation was inspired by the work of Onçafari, an environmental organization that works in the Pantanal of Brazil, the natural habitat of the jaguar in the south of that country. “The key is for the landowner to find an economic return in protecting the jaguar,” says Leonardo Sartorello, a biologist from Onçafari who traveled to Iberá to share experiences with his colleagues from Rewilding Argentina. “A cow eaten by a jaguar is worth 250 dollars; a sighting vehicle carries 10 tourists who each pay $250 per day. The account is fantastic. The rancher continues to raise his cows, compensates for the losses with ecotourism and, most importantly, preserves the jaguar because he no longer needs to hunt it,” explains Sartorello.
The Argentine foundation has come a long way on its side of the border. After eight years of work, he has convinced the political power of the importance of the jaguar as a tourist attraction in the province of Corrientes. One of the most convinced is Senator Sergio Flinta, president of the Iberá Provincial Committee. “Three years ago, 22,000 visitors entered the park and they did so only from Colonia Pellegrini [uno de los pueblos que sirven de “portal” al Iberá]. Today there are more than 80,000, from five different towns,” says Flinta.
The use of the yaguareté as an image of the province strengthened the undertakings of the rural communities that surround the estuary. Families that previously barely had a job today provide accommodation or offer themselves as tour guides. Ultimately, it is about achieving a peaceful coexistence between the jaguar and its main predator, man.