Obrigado Brasil

In July I was given the opportunity to guide a Starling trip aimed at the amazing wildlife Brazil has to offer. We would focus on the biggest wetland in the world, the Pantanal, after a visit to some of the higher upstream regions that flow down into the Pantanal.

The Pantanal is located primarily in Brazil, with smaller parts extending into Bolivia and Paraguay. It is one of the largest tropical wetlands in the world, covering an area of over 150,000 square kilometers (bigger than Belgium). The Pantanal is renowned for its incredible biodiversity, serving as a sanctuary for a wide variety of plant and animal species. This ecosystem is shaped by a combination of seasonal flooding and diverse habitats, including rivers, lakes, swamps, and forests.

The most beautiful time to visit the Pantanal is in rainy season (dec-mar), when rivers overflow, creating a vast, interconnected system of waterways that nurture the region's rich biodiversity. However, this time of year it is difficult to see the scattered wildlife, as well as getting around, or being stung by a billion insects. Hence most trips are done during winter (our summer) when the Pantanal is drier, and the wildlife aggregates around the remaining waterways and ponds.

As such we arrived in Cuiaba, and then drove to the beautiful NP of Chapada dos Guimarães. Chapada lies just south of the Amazon basin, some parts of it drain into the amazon, but are not considered to be part of the amazon forest.

Chapada is known for its landscapes, including vast plateaus, steep cliffs, waterfalls, caves, and unique rock formations. The region is unusually rich in biodiversity, blending ecosystems from the Amazon, Cerrado (typical Brasilian forest Savanna) and Pantanal. The forest is also less tall than in the amazon, which makes it much much easier to see birds.

Many birds were only seen on this first leg of the trip. Most impressive for many of the group were the Red-and-green macaw, that you cannot see in the Pantanal itself. There the Hyacinth macaw is dominant.

The time had come to follow the water downstream towards the Pantanal wetland, where we would be spending ten days and sleep in multiple lodges, each having their specialty. The northern lodges have more cerrado and termite landscapes, so they have higher chances to see Giant Anteater and Tamandua. The southern lodges are most known for Jaguar tourism.

This meant we would be driving the infamous Transpantaneira.
The Transpantaneira, also known as the Transpantanal Highway, is approximately 147 kilometers (about 91 miles) long. It starts in the town of Poconé and extends south to the village of Porto Jofre, deep within the Pantanal wetlands. It is a dirt road, famous for its 120 wooden bridges, that crosses various rivers, streams, and marshes along the route. But this road was never finished, and as such it does not really go anywhere. Many people want to keep it this way, in order to have less passing traffic through the heart of the Pantanal.

When you drive this road and enter the Pantanal, you instantly see how vulnerable this place is. The wetland lies downstream of all surrounding regions, from multiple countries even. If someone pollutes upstream, the Pantanal suffers. Also, >90% of the Pantanal is private farmland, with mainly beef farming. Because of the seasonal flooding, no other agriculture is possible.

In the past the farmers did what they wanted, which caused parts of the cerrado forest to be bulldozed (cows find more food in grassland compared to a dark forest), Jaguars to be shot and millions of birds to be poached and caught. Many species declined rapidly. Hyacinth macaws had a low point in the nineties with only 2500 birds remaining.

But in the last twenty years, a lot has changed: Ecotourism boomed, causing many animals to be worth much money alive than dead.
Nowadays more than a million people a year spend top dollar to visit the Pantanal. Which helps protect this very fragile place and generates more sustainable income streams for landowners.

The first stop was at the scenic Aymara lodge, which many of the group considered the best lodge we slept in. Mainly because they invest a lot in good photography opportunities within the premises of the lodge.

Aymara was about more than birds. We found a group of South American Coati, that we could photograph by using remote camera and wide angle lenses

But this place had an even bigger fury surprise. The owner told us -casually- that he had been testing an ocelot hide and that many days the cat visits. Would we be willing to ditch our safari plans and spend time waiting for the ocelot? "Beavis and butthead face": Euuuuuu... YES, the group replied. Easy decision then.

Safe to say we had our targets for this trip, like Macaws, Caiman, Anteaters & Jaguar, but just in cats alone the Pantanal shows great diversity: Jaguar, ocelot, Puma, Jaguarundi, Margay & Pantanal cat all live together in this patchy swamp environment. But Jaguars dominate and where they are a lot, they will chase away smaller cats. Margay and Pantanal cat are ghosts that are almost never seen.

Very close to Aymara lodge, is Piuval lodge, most famous for anteaters.

Bare-faced curassow is a bird species that was always super important for native Brazilian tribes. Since its stiff black feathers were used for hundreds of years -and are still used today- to make arrows.

Piuval is most known for anteaters. Giant anteater is super rare with a world population of only 5000 animals. We saw one animal at distance from the transpantaneira and then I was lucky to find another one at night, using thermal camera and spotlights (Thanks Siegfried for snapping an image). Tamandua is smaller than giant anteaters and has a more arboreal ecology where it feeds on termites and ants that live in trees. Both were super special to see in the wild.

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But as you would expect, most of the action happens on and around the waterways. In the dry season, there still is a lot of water, but the higher grounds dry up.
In the northern part of the Pantanal our days were spent with doing birdwatching walks, combined with safari trips in jeeps.
The more south you go, jeeps are replaced by boats and most observations happen on the water.

The evening on the water usually starts with thousands of nightjars coming to drink.

This is usually followed by fishing bats that take over when the nightjars fly away to go forage.

The Pantanal has the highest concentration of reptiles in the world. No less than ten million caimans occur here and you literally see them everywhere.

But caimans and tegu weren't the only reptiles on the list. I really really wanted to see anaconda and Pantanal is one of the places where you can see reliably see them. The green anaconda grows to extraordinary lengths: Individuals that measure 9m have been caught. Such a big animal requires a stable environment and the fluctuating Pantanal is not suited, that is why they mainly are found in the Amazon. The yellow anaconda measures up to 3m and can adapt to the changing water levels of the Pantanal. We were lucky to see two animals, but their heads were always in the bushes...

Further south down the Transpantaneira, your reach the village of Porto Jofre. This is the jaguar capital of the world. And this has been developing for twenty years.
We did the most boat rides in this part of the Pantanal, in order to maximize photography chances of jaguars.

It turned out this was also a very good spot for other wildlife, including Hyacinth macaws, Toco toucan, Capybara and tapirs...

And now for the big cat...
Nowadays, there are around 173,000 jaguars in the world, and most of these big cats are found in the Amazon rainforest. Their stronghold is in Brazil – it may hold around half of the estimated wild numbers.
As a spot of reference: Around 5000 jaguars live in the Pantanal, roughly similar to the entire world populations of Snow Leopards, Cheetahs and Tigers.

But if there are much more Jaguars outside the Pantanal, why are those still the ones everybody goes to see?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that the amazon is a less open landscape than the Pantanal, and because of it jaguars are more difficult to see there.
The Pantanal is also largely privately owned, and around twenty years ago some of the land owners/cattle farmers started tourist trips. In those days you would be happy to get a glimpse of a jaguar after spending a week in the Pantanal. Over twenty years, the Porto Jofre cats have learned to tolerate the boats, and nowadays all of the current jaguars are sons and daughters of parent jaguars that tolerated tourists.
These are no more than a few dozen individuals that were spoon fed to ignore wildlife photographers. What they got back for it is that land owners did not shoot them anymore. We stayed in a ranch where Jaguars killed on average one cow a week. Without tourism bringing in significant income, that would not be tolerated.

I find it very similar to Puma's being insanely difficult to see anywhere in their distribution range, except for Torres Del Paine where Billy saw 17 in three days.

Jaguar days start with up to 35 boats leaving Porto Jofre and looking for signs: birds alarming or capybara running away, but the most important sign is an ever so slightly movement in the reed vegetation. A clear sign that a jaguar is on the prowl. Boats then follow this movement, and sometimes the jaguar will appear.

Once that happens, similar to other big cat tourism, people twitch and flock.

If there wouldn't be so many boats looking, the cats wouldn't be found. Since they are still very difficult to see in the thick vegetation.
But on the other hand, it is not a relaxed way to spend time with such a special animal. The jaguars themselves simply do not care. They will sleep on a river bank with 100 photographers filling their memory cards, they will hunt successfully with many boats following them.

After having seen a few of these crowded sightings, we decided to look for our own jaguars. We might see fewer, but on the other hand get much better images and a nicer vibe. It did not disappoint:

So is this the end of the story? No.
There is one animal I have not mentioned so far. And it turned out to be my favorite from the trip: Onça-d'água in Portuguese, meaning water jaguar.

The giant river otter is... giant, measuring in at 1.5-1.8 m and weighing in at 22-32 kg. On land It looks more like a German shepherd than an otter.
On three occasions they gave us some time in good lighting and we could stay with them for half an hour.

In total we saw 229 species of birds (https://ebird.org/tripreport/259050) and 21 species of mammals.

Bird highlights included Southern Screamer, Sunbittern, Jabiru, Capped Heron, White eared Puffbird, Toco Toucan, White Woodpecker, Pale crested Woodpecker, Red-legged Seriema, Yellow faced Amazon, Mato grosso Antbird, Great Rufous woodcreeper, Red billed Scythebill, Chotoy Spinetail, Chapada Flycatcher, White rumped Tanager, Curl crested Jay, White banded Tanager and 16 (!!) species of parrots (macaws, parrots and parakeets).

Mammals highlights were Jaguar, Ocelot, Tamandua, Brazilian Tapir, Giant anteater and Giant river otter. We missed Maned wolf, but since we did not visit Emas NP, it was always going to be very difficult. Just like Puma, Jaguarundi, Margay and Pantanal Cat (which our guide had never seen). I guess we have to go back then?