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T.The Chaco peccary is so elusive that scientists believed it to be extinct until it was “discovered” in 1975. There are currently over 50 different ecosystems across northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Bolivia.
Working with indigenous Huichi and Criollo communities to protect the rights of animals and their lands in Argentina, Mikaela Camino knows how hard they are to find. She has only ever seen one Chaco Peccary. KimirelloThirteen years after she founded the NGO Proyecto Quimilero, she fell in love with an endangered mammal that looks like a unique hybrid of a wild boar and a hedgehog.
“When I first started out, I was told the Chaco Peccary was extinct outside the reserve,” says Camino. “So when I found it, I thought it was amazing. In one of the most isolated areas of arid Chaco, he set up a watch to find more. But then the loggers started coming.” ”
The second largest forest in South America after the Amazon, the Gran Chaco is one of the most deforested places on earth. According to his 2019 joint research with The Guardian, more than 133 square miles are lost each month, cutting down vast soybean farms and cattle ranches that export to markets in the United States, China and Europe. Neglected on the international stage, it receives little conservation funding and celebrity attention compared to Amazon.
In the areas where Camino works, land clearing was accelerated by the economic collapse of Argentina in 2001. The loss of trees highlighted by Global Forest Watch shows the extent of damage over the past two decades. The area is home to charismatic species such as maned wolves, great armadillos and jabiru, many of which are found nowhere else on earth.
At the current rate of deforestation, the Gran Chaco’s mosaic of life could completely collapse. This time, the chaco peccary loss is guaranteed. Unlike the Amazon, there is little academic research on tipping points, and people living here are also witnessing changes in climate change and the decline in the self-sufficiency of forests due to land clearing.
“The Chaco Peccary cannot survive in such rapid deforestation. No one in there really likes these animals,” says Camino.
More than 140 countries, including Argentina and Paraguay, signed an international agreement at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 to stop and reverse deforestation by 2030. But economic realities complicate the situation. Argentina’s economy is collapsing again, with annual inflation in 2022 reaching its highest level in her 30 years, and the country desperate for dollars it can earn by trading commodities such as soybeans and beef. I’m here.
In Paraguay, the success of the Mennonite community has taken a heavy toll on the forests, dubbed ‘Green Hell’ by early settlers from Canada, and transformed the country into one of the world’s most important beef producers.
“The Gran Chaco has been at a crossroads for a long time,” says Gaston Gordillo, professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. “His 2007 forest law in Argentina succeeded in slowing deforestation to some extent, but it also created a paradox by establishing a legal way to destroy forests.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, civil society organizations teamed up to launch the 2030 Initiative to protect the remaining land in Gran Chaco, Argentina. They called for changes to the region’s economic model, urged local and central governments to stay away from mining, and called for greater compliance with forest laws. But Paraguay’s new highway seems likely to open up more areas to ranches.
“Argentina’s agribusiness sector is very strong,” says Gordillo. “We are going through a severe economic crisis. a strong source of supply, which means there is a strong incentive to continue.
“The dichotomy is clear: Either we continue to destroy forests and the environment, or we don’t. But unfortunately, this is an imbalanced conflict.”
In the case of the Chaco peccary, the species has only 30 years left to save, and current deforestation rates mean all non-protected habitat will be gone by 2051.
The 2022 Whitley Award-winning conservation work on the Kamino focuses on priority areas to protect mammals, help local people resist corporate land grabs, and stay on Indigenous lands. increase. She hopes that mammals will become the flagship species for protecting the region.
“The only way to save the Chaco peccary is to protect the forest. It represents a unique evolutionary pathway: a comprehensive species to work with the entire ecosystem,” she says.
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