Jaguar release offers a lifeline to Gran Chaco’s lonely big cats
By Sarah Brown 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 spo...