On New Year’s Day, a gate in Iberá Park’s Jaguar Reintroduction Center was opened, and the male jaguar Jatobazinho left his large enclosure and entered a life of freedom in Argentina’s most extensive wetlands.
The release of Jatobazinho, the first adult male jaguar to be freed in Iberá, is an important milestone in the efforts of @Rewilding_Argentina, the strategic partner of @Tompkins_Conservation, to restore Iberá’s top predator. He joins seven other jaguars, two females each with two cubs (sired by Jatobazinho) and a single female, who were released in 2021.
Jatobazinho has an incredible back story! He was found, exhausted and near starving, outside of a school in the Brazilian Pantanal after swimming across the Paraguay River. He was rescued and many Brazilian governmental and private institutions participated in his recovery. In September 2019, Jatobazinho arrived to the Jaguar Reintroduction Center in Iberá where Rewilding Argentina, the Government of Corrientes and the National Parks Administration are leading the world’s first attempt to reintroduce the jaguar to a region where they had been extirpated.
Jatobazinho is the eighth wild jaguar freed into the 1.8 million protected acres of Iberá Park, after 70 years of absence in the Province of Corrientes. More jaguars will be released as part of the project during 2022.
In 2021, the dream of returning the jaguar to Corrientes came true. As this new year dawns, Rewilding Argentina and their partners are continuing their work to create a more sustainable, beautiful and wilder Argentina, to combat the global extinction crisis and build a better future for our planet!
