AGAINST THE ODDS

Brazil's Pantanal was consumed by wildfires in 2020. Miraculously, its jaguars not only survived, but are now thriving in the world's most famous wetland.

- DOUG LOYNES

A DOZEN RIVERBOATS HUDDLE AGAINST the bank of a narrow tributary of the Rio Cuiabá in Brazil. The passengers on board jostle soundlessly to get the best view, while their camera lenses reach out like limbs across the water towards a patch of sand on the opposite bank

The mother emerges from the shrub first. She struts out onto the beach with an air of nonchalance. Her two cubs tumble out after her, splashing and play-fighting in the water to the delight of the tourists, who are all hungrily snapping photographs. It's our second jaguar sighting of the day. Given what happened here not too long ago, I can scarcely believe our luck. “Luck?” our guide Fisher Sousa says, raising an eyebrow. “We see jaguars every day.”

In 2020, the Pantanal, the planet's largest tropical wetland - an area larger than England, spanning Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia - and the home of the highest concentration of jaguars on Earth, was engulfed in flames. Thirty per cent of the biome was scorched beyond recognition. International news reports showed apocalyptic images of wildfires surging through the forest, leaving the charred remains of coati and tapir in their wake. For people like Sousa, working in the Pantanal's developing ecotourism industry, there was a concern about what the fires would mean for the region's flagship species: the jaguar.

The Jaguar ID Project has built up a catalogue of 284 jaguars in the Pantanal's Porto Jofre river system, each one identified by its unique spot pattern. According to Abbie Martin, the project's director, the data on jaguars after the fires paints a promising picture. “After 2020, people seized on this narrative that the jaguars were dying,” she says. “But look at the numbers from 2019 and 2020, and compare them to 2021.”