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Jaguar release offers a lifeline to Gran Chaco’s lonely big cats

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The lowland forest of El Impenetrable National Park in northern Argentina sprawls across the hot, swampy green of the Gran Chaco biome, home to South America’s largest mammals and thousands of plant species. It’s a critical conservation unit for the protection of one of the planet’s most deforested ecosystems, yet it’s missing an important resident: a female jaguar (Panthera onca). Two-thirds of the Gran Chaco, which spreads across 650,000 square kilometers (251,000 square miles), are in northern Argentina, where just 10 jaguars remain — all of them male. The last female was spotted there 35 years ago, Sebastián Di Martino, conservation director at the NGO Rewilding Argentina, told Mongabay. “The situation here is urgent,” he said. “The males look for females, but never find one.” Keraná was rescued in Paraguay as a cub after her mother was killed by hunters. She was released into the El Impenetrable National Park in northern Argentina on March 15. Image by Andi Villarreal / Rewilding Argentina. Keraná, a female rescued as a cub in Paraguay, is the new beacon of hope for the Argentinian Chaco’s jaguars. On March 15, she was released into El Impenetrable in a joint effort between Rewilding Argentina, the National Parks Administration, and the government of Chaco province. She will soon be joined by a second female, Nalá, in the next few weeks. Rewilding experts say they hope these females will breed with the wild males and help bring the population back from the brink of a regional extinction. The…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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