Animals in Paraguay

Paraguay is a landlocked country in the heart of South America, split in two by the Paraguay River, and each half has its own climate and its own wildlife. East of the river lies the Región Oriental, with green hills, farmland and the last patches of Atlantic forest, where rain is plentiful and toucans, tapirs and the national bird, the bellbird, live among the trees. Almost all of the country's people live there, around Asunción, Ciudad del Este and Encarnación. West of the river lies the Chaco, which covers about 60 percent of Paraguay but holds less than 3 percent of its people. It is a vast, flat plain of thorny scrub, palm savannas and salty lagoons, with summers that are among the hottest in South America and less rain the farther west you go, and it remains one of the last strongholds of the jaguar, along with cougars, giant anteaters and armadillos. In between, the floodplains of the rivers, from the edge of the Pantanal in the north to the Ñeembucú wetlands in the south, fill with capybaras, caimans and marsh deer.

People and wildlife are even tied together in Paraguay's language. Most Paraguayans speak Guaraní as well as Spanish, and the Tupi Guaraní languages gave the world animal names such as jaguar and capybara. But the land is changing fast: cattle ranching has given the Chaco one of the highest rates of forest loss in the world, and the jaguar is now considered critically endangered in the country. Defensores del Chaco, the largest protected area in Paraguay, and the Mbaracayú reserve in the east protect some of what remains.

Tourism is small and quiet. Visitors come to see the Jesuit missions of Trinidad and Jesús, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to watch birds and flamingos at the lagoons of the central Chaco, and to look for jaguars and other wildlife on ranches and reserves in the north.

Paraguay has wild animals that can be dangerous in some situations, mainly in the Chaco, the remaining forests and the wetlands, but serious incidents are rare for visitors who travel with local guides. Venomous snakes are the real risk. Pit vipers cause most bites, and rattlesnakes live in tall grass, farm fields and the dry scrub of the Chaco, so most bites happen to rural workers. Hospitals carry antivenom, and getting to one quickly is what matters most. Wearing boots, watching where you step, checking around woodpiles and never putting your hands into holes or under logs prevent most bites.

Wild cats are powerful hunters, but they avoid people and attacks are extremely rare, even in the parts of the Chaco where jaguars still live. Along rivers and ponds, caimans rest on the banks and slip into the water when people come near, and large constrictor snakes hunt in the marshes, but they are not venomous and are rarely a threat to people. The heat of the Chaco can be more dangerous than its animals, so carrying plenty of water and avoiding the hottest hours of the day are just as important.

Paraguay's best known animals are spread between the Chaco, the river wetlands and the eastern forests, and the Chaco is where most of them still live. The jaguar is the one researchers follow most closely: camera traps on ranches and in parks of the northern Chaco, such as Defensores del Chaco and the lands around Bahía Negra on the Paraguay River, record it regularly, but seeing one in person remains rare. The cougar shares the same dry forests and is just as elusive. The maned wolf, with its long legs and red coat, hunts in the open grasslands and palm savannas at dusk, where rattlesnakes also live in the dry ground. Along the rivers and in the wetlands of the north and south, capybaras graze in large groups on the banks and anacondas lie in the shallow water, especially when the water level drops. The smaller cats, the ocelot, the margay and the jaguarundi, live in both the Chaco and the eastern forests, while boa constrictors are common in the dry scrub and even on farms, where they hunt rodents.