Biological Diversity
The People
The Threat
The Challenge
The Response
Actions
|
The Pantanal, an expansive mosaic of flooded savannas and wetlands along
the Paraguay River and its tributaries, is one of the largest wetlands
in the world, encompassing an area four times the size of Switzerland.
Enormous aggregations of birds and abundant wildlife populations occur
in this highly productive ecosystem. Some 17 million people in the
region rely on the rivers and wetlands of the Pantanal for food and
transportation. Importantly, over 80 percent of the Pantanal floods
seasonally, a process that helps modify the severity and frequency of
floods downstream along the Paraguay River.
The Pantanal is under assault due to the demand for its resources.
Riverine forests and upland tropical dry forests are being cleared for
farming and timber. The rivers are threatened by toxic chemical
pollution from agricultural pesticides, and by mercury and other heavy
metals from gold mining. Gold mining is particularly crippling to river
ecosystems because it involves the use of high pressure water to blast
away river banks. The use of high water pressure produces heavy
siltation that kills fish and aquatic plants.
An even greater threat to the Pantanal wetlands is the planned expansion
of the Hydrovia Paraguay-Paraná waterway to provide the land-locked
countries of Paraguay and Bolivia with better access to the Atlantic
Ocean. This waterway project, involving the governments of Brazil,
Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay, would drastically alter the
water flow patterns of the Pantanal. This would mean ecological
disaster for the people and wildlife that depend on the wetlands, as
well as a much greater threat from damaging floods downstream.
As originally designed, long stretches of the Pantanal River system
would be channelized to facilitate shipping. Beginning in Cáceres, near
the headwaters of the Paraguay River in Brazil, this 3,442 Km waterway
would continue down the Paraná River and would cut overland to the
Uruguay River, where it would reach the Uruguayan port city of Puerto
Nueva Palmira on the Rio La Plata estuary. The Hydrovia Paraguay-Paraná
waterway project is part of an ambitious international effort to build
heavy infrastructure in the Pantanal region. It is hoped that by
slowing the development of the waterway that conservation concerns can
be effectively addressed.
|