SOUTH AMERICA’S FIRST CONTINENTAL WILDLIFE CORRIDOR.
The Jaguar Rivers Initiative is the first multi-country effort to create a massive wildlife corridor in the heart of South America. Uniting successful grassroots nonprofits in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, the initiative will restore ecosystems, bring back key species, and develop nature-based economies in a new cross-border model that also addresses the mass extinction crisis and climate instability on a global scale.
In a groundbreaking announcement during Climate Week at The Explorers Club, an alliance of grassroots South American nonprofits has launched South America’s largest continental-scale rewilding endeavor. The Jaguar Rivers Initiative plans to reconnect fragmented ecosystems across the vast Paraná Basin using river corridors as the connective tissue. “We all know the urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises,” says Kristine Tompkins of Tompkins Conservation, “This bold initiative underlines the need for coordinated, large-scale action before it’s too late. I’d call it a lifeline to our planet. South America is in the midst of an unparalleled ecological crisis. Wildlife populations across the region have declined by 94% since 1970—the steepest drop in the world. The drivers of this collapse—deforestation, river degradation, fragmentation, fire, and overexploitation—are intensifying in the face of climate change
Nearly 1 million square miles, an area almost twice the size of Alaska The Jaguar Rivers Initiative will restore, protect, and connect ecosystems throughout the heart of South America covering. According to Deli Saavedra, the director of the initiative:
We’re undertaking a very strategic act to safeguard one of the largest river systems in the world. By restoring its ecological integrity, diverse species and communities currently under threat in four countries have the opportunity to thrive, using a model of nature restoration combined with regenerative economies that has been tested and proven successful in places like the Brazilian Pantanal and the Iberá Wetlands of Argentina.
The initiative is led by nonprofits Rewilding Argentina, Nativa (Bolivia), Moisés Bertoni (Paraguay) and Onçafari (Brazil). A campaign for private funding will provide resources for the initiative, with early donor commitments at $26 million U.S. dollars, approximately one-third of the operating budget for the first three years, to be announced at the Global Citizen Festival. Donors include Tompkins Conservation, Kisco Conservation Foundation, Rainforest Trust, Wyss Foundation,Bobolink Foundation, the Postcode Lottery Group, DOB Ecology, Freyja Foundation, Greg and Mary Moga, Teresa and Candido Bracher, and Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.
