Protect This Place: Latin America's Gran Chaco Forest

Beef and soybean agriculture are carving up this massive forest, which spans four countries and has some of the world’s highest deforestation rates.

Voices

December 13, 2024 - by Gabriela Viñales

The Gran Chaco is home to 25 different Indigenous communities at risk of displacement from their ancestral lands by deforestation and land conversion, leaving them with nowhere else to go. Its great variety of ecosystems are also home to endemic, endangered, and threatened plants and wildlife, including around 3,400 species of plants, 150 mammals, and 500 bird species. Several IUCN Red List species, such as jaguars, peccaries, solitary eagles, giant anteaters, and lowland tapirs, are facing habitat loss within the Paraguayan Chaco, as land use change poses an increased threat to their survival.

The Place:
The Gran Chaco covers 303,782 square miles spanning Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil. It is the second-largest natural forest in Latin America and has experienced some of the highest levels of deforestation on Earth.

Why it matters:
The Gran Chaco is home to 25 different Indigenous communities at risk of displacement from their ancestral lands by deforestation and land conversion, leaving them with nowhere else to go. Its great variety of ecosystems are also home to endemic, endangered, and threatened plants and wildlife, including around 3,400 species of plants, 150 mammals, and 500 bird species. Several IUCN Red List species, such as jaguars, peccaries, solitary eagles, giant anteaters, and lowland tapirs, are facing habitat loss within the Paraguayan Chaco, as land use change poses an increased threat to their survival.



A Gran Chaco resident. Photo: Quadriz

The threat:
The rapid forest loss within the Gran Chaco is primarily driven by the expansion of commercial agriculture, particularly beef and soybean production, with Paraguay emerging as a top 10 exporter of these commodities. Contributing to this trend are the largely private ownership of the majority of the Paraguayan Chaco and a legal framework that allows up to 75% of privately owned forest land to be deforested for agricultural purposes.



Agricultural fields seen from the air, carving up the Gran Chaco. Photo: Quadriz

More:
https://therevelator.org/protect-gran-chaco-forest/