Biodiversity security

 

Volunteers coming to rescue jaguars, other animals injured during Brazil's wildfires

Since January, sweeping wildfires—likely set by farmers clearing land—have scorched nearly 20 percent of the young male's habitat in the Brazilian Pantanal, part of the world’s largest tropical wetland. Stretching across Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay, the 70,000-square-mile Pantanal has the highest density of mammal species on Earth. While the Amazon rainforest, which is 30 times the size of the Pantanal, usually makes headlines with frequent wildfires, such blazes are not as common in the Pantanal. The biggest fires in the Pantanal this year are four times larger than the Amazon's biggest blazes, NASA satellites show.

To save its unique biodiversity, teams of volunteers have fanned out throughout the region, rescuing hundreds of animals and leaving others food and water.

In September, volunteers traveling by boat spotted the injured jaguar lying on his side on a riverbank in Encontro das Águas State Park, home to one of the species' highest populations.