Pantanal

The South American Pantanal ( Portuguese for swamp ) is one of the largest inland wetlands in the world. Although the species-rich wetland was declared a nature reserve since 2000 and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, it is acutely threatened by industrialization and deforestation.

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Geography

The Pantanal is located in the central south-west of Brazil in the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso to the plateau - small parts of the Pantanal still rich in the east of the west each subsequent neighbors Paraguay and Bolivia.

Definition

The Pantanal is still very little developed and sparsely populated river valley with numerous freshwater lakes (in the south to isolated salt lakes - Salinas '), which is fed by numerous rivers and is the Río Paraguay, which the region supplying and draining the main river, flowing through it. It is a species-rich wetland has developed.

Size

With some 230,000 km ², the Pantanal is almost as large as the Federal Republic of Germany before unification. There is on average only about 95 m above sea level.

Places

The Pantanal is accessible from the south via the cities Aquidauana, Miranda and Corumbá; from the north on Barao de Melgaço, Cáceres, Poconé and Puerto Suárez.

Transpantaneira

Your arrival, also known Transpantaneira, a heaped road that leads 145 km in the Pantanal begins. It includes 127 large and small wooden bridges, which are often in an adventurous state and are patched regularly. In 1973 started the construction of a north-south link, which should extend to the BR- 262. However, the project was realized only in the state of Mato Grosso. The continuous dirt road that needs to be repaired every year and re- attached at many points, ends at the border of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul in Porto Jofre.

Flood plains

The Rio Paraguay on its 600 km long path through the lowlands of the Pantanal only a drop of 30 meters. Therefore, the water that flows into the basin due to the rainfall in the northern highlands via numerous rivers, very slowly leave the area to the south. So once again be a year during the rainy season from November to March, much of the lowlands flooded and two-thirds of the area are partly meters deep under water. This creates a complex system of savannas, vast flooded areas of water, rainforest -like river gallery forests and dry forests, as well as a mosaic of rivers, lakes and shallow lagoons, the extent and size of the annual change cycle of rainy and dry seasons are determined. But also the wild animals - - During the rainy season the cattle runs in the dry forests and on the embankments of the rivers back that emerged in each case by sediment deposits and arise.

Flora and Fauna

In this unique natural paradise, there are an estimated 665 species of birds more than in all of Europe, and ornithologists doubt that all of them could already be detected. The Pantanal has become the largest deposit of Hyacinth Macaws in Brazil and it is a very important habitat for the endangered giant otter. Among the approximately 123 species of mammals are the predators jaguar, puma and ocelot, and their prey such as marsh deer, peccaries and capybaras, the largest rodents in the world, which are up to 70 kilograms. Furthermore, there are at least 2000 plants, 269 fish, reptiles and amphibians, as well as countless a variety of insects. The bird Jabiru, the giant stork is the symbol of the Pantanal. Caimans inhabit with 35 million copies of this area.

If the Paraguay River from October to March flooded the Pantanal, the swamp area with giant water lilies, Victoria, covered.

Importance

A part of the area is a nature reserve, the National Park Pantanal Matogrossense is it with 1350 km ², the largest protected area, which joined in 1993 the Ramsar Convention. In 2000, UNESCO proclaimed the national park and three adjoining private reserves of the Brazilian environmental organization Ecotropica (total area 1878 km ² ) on the World Heritage Site. In the same year the entire Pantanal in Brazil was declared a Biosphere Reserve. The Global Nature Fund and Ecotropica have the Pantanal "Threatened Lake of the Year 2007" appointed.

The Pantanal served as the setting for the novel The Testament by John Grisham.

Threat

The skins of Jacarés, a crocodile subfamily, bring on the black market a lot of money, which also applies to rare fish and birds as well as parrots and for the skins of wild cats, so that Brazil's government sends increasingly heavily armed guard at the threatened by poachers area.

Prior to 2000, large areas have been irreparably destroyed by ( still ) lucrative logging.

In recent times, the Pantanal is threatened by ethanol plants in its catchment area, get their raw sewage into the extensive river system of the wetland. At the same time the construction of new sugar cane and soybean plantations in the withdrawal areas of upland cerrados threatened species richness, is amplified by the use of heavy agricultural machinery erosion with subsequent change in water levels in the rivers, and degraded water quality through the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.

A study of the environmental organization Conservation International do Brasil concludes that the natural plant world could be completely wiped out already in 2050, when the destruction continues at the same pace as before.

Tourism

For decades, the Pantanal is a popular destination for nature lovers and eco-tourists. Thus, it is possible to know the Pantanal by the local ranches. These ranches offer some of hostel and are in the southern part of the Pantanal mostly accessible by aircraft or an SUV. In the northern part of the Pantanal can be reached via the Transpantaneira street and to the south leads the so-called Estrada Parque directly on Buraco the piranhas in the heart of the Pantanal.

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