CAIMANS, CAPYBARAS & VERY BIG CATS

THE SPRAWLING, HUMID PANTANAL WETLAND SUPPORTS ONE OF THE HIGHEST CONCENTRATIONS OF WILDLIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE WORLD'S GREATEST DENSITY OF JAGUARS. AIDED BY CONSERVATION PROJECTS, THE BIG CAT'S NUMBERS ARE INCREASING, MAKING SAFARI EXPERIENCES IN THIS WILD, WESTERN CORNER OF BRAZIL EVEN MORE REWARDING

- SARAH MARSHALL

Slinking through the tall grass, the feline form ahead of us is mesmerising. She moves lithely, graceful as a burlesque mademoiselle, but her ability to vanish in an instant makes her more nebulous than a ghost. “Seeing this jaguar is even more special than seeing any other,” says Mario Haberfeld, co-founder of Brazilian NGO Onçafari, who’s clocked up more big cat sightings than most. “Mainly because she wasn’t supposed to exist.”

Aracy, the rosetted beauty now crouched in front of us, is a symbol of hope for her species. The granddaughter of Isa, an orphaned jaguar successfully rewilded by Mario and his team in 2015, Aracy is living, breathing proof of nature’s ability to thrive if given a helping hand. Rescued by wildlife authorities when their mother was accidentally killed after straying into an urban area, Isa and her sister Fera were destined to spend their lives in captivity. Reluctant to let that happen, Mario and his team embarked on a pioneering, year-long programme to release the big cats back into their natural habitat, training them to hunt and survive without developing a dependency on humans.

Documented by the 2016 BBC documentary Jaguars: Brazil’s Super Cats, with a narration by Sir David Attenborough, the project brought global attention to a vast area of Brazil few people could pinpoint on a map.

Wild, unpredictable and, in parts, unfathomable, the Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland. Bigger than England, it sprawls across two Brazilian states and creeps into areas of Bolivia and Paraguay. During the summer rainy season, from December to March, its network of waterways flood; in the dry season, the waters recede, exposing vast savannahs and gallery forests.