ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - C - THE JAGUAR (Panthera onca)

[Matias]

An unlikely safari in Brazil is helping save the Pantanal’s jaguars

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• A pioneer in wildlife safaris in Brazil, the Onçafari Project combines jaguar sightseeing with conservation of the species and its reintroduction into nature.
• Thanks to the strategy of getting jaguars habituated to safari vehicles, the Pantanal has become the best place in Brazil to spot the feline; the number of tourists at the project’s host farm has tripled in a decade.
• The presence of tourists has changed farmers’ mentality, from previously seeing jaguars as a pest to kill, to now even working as Onçafari tour guides.
  

• In 2015, Onçafari recorded the world’s first successful case of reintroduction of captive jaguars into nature; the two females have since given birth to five offspring and even four grandcubs.
  

Watching the largest feline in the Americas in the wild has always been a rare and remarkable experience. In Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest continental floodplain and one of the main jaguar refuges, such encounters have become increasingly frequent. In the municipality of Miranda, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, 95% of the guests of the Caiman Farm, which is open to tourists, have seen at least one jaguar on each visit.


During a reddish sunset in August 2021, I had the opportunity to see my first wild jaguars and understand that this is not just a beautiful ecotourism experience. The sight of the mother jaguar, devouring with her cub a recently slaughtered carcass just 5 meters (16 feet) from our four-wheel-drive vehicle adapted for safaris, was special. Fera (“Furious Beast” in Portuguese), as the jaguar was nicknamed, is part of conservation history, along with her sister, Isa, as part of the world’s first successful case of captive jaguar reintroduction into nature.


The first Brazilian safari

The only member of the big cat genus Panthera not yet listed as threatened with extinction, jaguars (Panthera onca) have a strong ally in their fight for survival in the Pantanal. This is the Onçafari Project, which turned 10 years old in 2021 and has already registered sightings of more than 200 individuals on the Caiman Farm. This is the result of combining the pioneering African safari-like experience of observing animals with a conservation project that conducts scientific studies and reintroduces rehabilitated animals back to the wild.

Since former Formula 1 test driver and conservationist Mario Haberfeld teamed up with farm owner, entrepreneur and environmentalist Roberto Klabin to implement the project at the Caiman Farm to habituate local jaguars to safari vehicles, the territory has become the best place to watch these felines in Brazil. Within a decade, the number of guests has tripled. It’s a win-win for all involved: the tourists get to see the star of the area’s Big Five — a list that also includes tapirs (Tapirus terrestris), giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), yacare caimans (Caiman yacare) and marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus). And the jaguars win as the species gains protection and an increasing number of advocates.


Worth more alive than dead

An example of this change in awareness is another Mario — Mario Nélson Cleto, my safari field guide, who comes from a family of jaguar hunters. “My grandfather said he was ashamed of me when I took this job, but now my family understands why I protect jaguars,” he says.



In the not-so-distant past, a good jaguar used to be a dead jaguar, as far as the local population was concerned. At the top of the food chain, the species was an enemy to be shot when it entered farms in search of the easiest prey: cattle. Killing jaguars was part of the culture in the Pantanal, home to more than 3.8 million head of cattle in just the Brazilian part of the wetland.


“The development of tourism to watch jaguars has changed that culture,” says Haberfeld, who tried out the best safaris available before developing the Onçafari Project at the Caiman Farm in 2011. “With more farms dedicated to ecotourism, people from the Pantanal have become aware that jaguars bring money and jobs,” he says.

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