The following people were interviewed for today’s program. Our thanks to:

Dr. Frederick Swarts
Director
Waterland Research Institute

Jack Capp
Special Assistant to the Director
USDA Forest Service International Programs
Outreach & Partnerships

Supplementary Websites:

“Empraba”:http://www.embrapa.br/english/

” Empraba section”:http://www.embrapa.br/english/units/centers/cpap.htm

” Pantanal”:http://www.cpap.embrapa.br/ingles.html (Empraba)

Interviews:

ES: Thank for talking with us today, Mr. Capp. Would you please tell me a little bit about the Pantanal.

JK: Yeah, I’m happy to, and I’ve had the pleasure of going there twice. It was really quite an adventure. The Pantanal is in central South America. It’s shared by three countries: Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Most of it’s in Brazil. It’s really onE of the world’s great natural wonders. It’s the world’s largest freshwater wetland, over 27 million acres. That’s roughly ten times the size of the Everglades. It’s one of the world’s greatest assemblages of plants and animals. Over 650 species of birds, for example, and 250 species of fish. And I hear that they’re still identifying new species. It’s vast and many parts are inaccessible with seasonal flooding. So it’s a tough place to get around at this point.
One of the interests we have is, you know that over 80 million Americans watch, photograph, or study birds. And it’s a very large industry here. There’s a lot of interest. That’s about 30-40 percent of Americans. And we know right now that over 30 species of birds from North America, most of them from or coming to the U.S., winter in the Pantanal. So they fly long distances and chase the sun across the equator, and come back each year. So we have a lot of interest in making sure the birds come back to us. So it’s a real biodiversity hotspot. It’s still relatively intact. When you think of the wetlands, and all the values that they have – flood control, water quality, housing all these animals and plants, providing water supply, and water transportation – this is a very significant thing. We see some developing tourism there, wildlife viewing and fishing. And the Pantanal, the headwaters are at the Paraguayan River. So the water comes off the highlands, in the watershed, goes in the Pantanal, goes up and down each year depending on the wet or dry season, and that meters out, you might say, the water into the Paraguayan River. It’s a very important function of flood control, and not only that, but it provides support for all these plants and animals. When you hear people talk about it, you sometimes hear them talk about it in less quantifiable values. But just to know that there’s still a place like this around, one of the special places on earth that’s not been heavily developed and changed. It wasn’t too long ago, look at the Everglades and how that’s been altered and we’re trying to fix it now. Some of the major river or wetlands in the world have been highly altered. So it’s [the Pantanal] is a special place, and I hope that people get a chance to see it some day and take advantage of that.

ES: How would you describe the changes going on in the Pantanal?

JK: Well, I did sat that it’s largely intact, but there’s certainly some changes that are going on. And most people feel that the changes will continue. I guess I would categorize it in ten ways. The first is agriculture. It’s a very rich area, so there’s a lot of alterations going for the production of soybeans and rice, for example. And numb two, there’s a lot of livestock grazing. And sometimes the water drainage is altered so we can have better livestock grazing, the more extensive grazing. And three, there’s a lot of drainage going on. A large project was proposed in the past, “Hydrovia”:http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/sep/southamerica.html, but that’s largely been dropped now. That was to provide a large, deep-water transportation system like you see in the Mississippi. But now small drainage projects are going on. Fourth, there’s a large gas pipeline from Brazil, an over 2 billion U.S. dollar project that would cut across the Pantanal. Similar to that are railroads and roads. They themselves aren’t necessarily so bad, but there’s a lot of disturbance, and they bring a lot of settlement. Number six is water pollution. There’s a lot of mining going on and with it comes mercury contamination. Also chemicals from fertilizers. And there’s a lot of raw sewage going into the Pantanal, in different tributaries. A famous example is the ??tubatah, which dumps million of gallons a day into the tributaries of the Pantanal in raw sewage. Seven, deforestation. The upper reaches of the watershed, up in the ???sahaded dry tropical forest, directly above the Pantanal.

%%%%%%%%%% Dr. Frederick Swarts %%%%%%%%%%%%

ES: Thank you talking with Earth & Sky today, Dr. Swarts. Could you please tell me about the scientific research that Waterland Research Institute is involved with in the Pantanal wetland region?

FS: Waterland Research Institute itself is rather new and developing. So in terms of getting an idea about the research being done in the area, that’s not the right avenue to go. In reality, if you want to know the scientific research, there’s one very good government Institution, called EMBRAPA, that’s right in the heart of the Pantanal, in the city of Carumba. And that is the major research organ for agricultural type research, some of the major research being done there. And there’s a couple of good universities doing research in the area. In reality, though, the amount of research being done in the Pantanal is very limited. It’s an area that’s so large, it’s larger than the state of Florida. It’s very under-researched. Perhaps I can give you an example. The group that went in for three weeks of sampling, they found something like 15 new species of fish. So it’s quite an under-researched area. That was AQUARAP, coordinated by the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History and a few other organizations.

ES:

FS: First let me tell you briefly about the Pantanal, and that’ll give you an idea of why there’s so little research. First of all, it is very large. And we’re talking an area that’s larger than many countries. It’s an area larger than 30 of the 50 U.S. states. It’s larger than Florida. It’s larger than New York State. It’s 15 times the size of the Everglades. So we’re talking an area that is very, very large, and yet very poorly inhabited. It’s a remote region. Inside the Pantanal itself, the estimates vary as to what they consider the Pantanal and not the Pantanal.It ranges from 20,000 to 200,000, depending in whether you count the urban centers or not. There’s very little population for the size. There’s very few research centers in the area, other than AGRAPA. There’s one that’s partially used in the lower Pantanal, and a couple in the north Pantanal. There’s very few biological field stations. The area is inaccesible in large areas. There’s no roads. I mean the area floods. Significant parts of the Pantanal floods. Some people can’t get in without a boat. So for getting into the inner areas to do research is very difficult. So I guess that gives you a brief overview of that aspect. And you’re talking about an area that has over 650 species of birds, the most recent estimates (Winter 2001). It has over 150 species of fish that are known, and considerably more that are not known. And so we’re talking about an area that has a lot of diversity. It’s an area that’s not as well known, it doesn’t have the international constituency that the Amazon has. There’s a lot of interest in the Amazon. Everybody’s heard of the Amazon. So we’re studying an area of the Pantanal that’s extraordinarily beautiful. And some of the footage that you might see on TV of animals, and they’re talking about the Amazon, was actually shot in the Pantanal because it’s very concentrated there in terms of their wildlife. Despite that, the Amazon is very well known, and the Pantanal is not well known. It’s just becoming better well known in the last few years. And so it’s not an area that’s drawn a lot of research attention there or a lot of tourism, or anything of that nature.

ES:

FS: Well to be perfectly honest the main thing that the Waterland Research Institute has been doing at this point is to work in international conferences and helping to develop worldwide constituency for the Pantanal. They’ve been mainly working in the conservation area, more than the research area at this point, although the Center for Research there has a small staff involved in that. In reality if you’re talking about the Waterland Research Institute you’re talking about an organization that’s been working on establishing international conferences, bringing people from the three main stake holder nations. We’re talking about an area that crosses borders from Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Bringing international experts from these three stake holder nations to be able to discuss the Pantanal and be able to discuss its future. And the reason is, at this point the Pantanal is relatively pristine. Among people that’ve been working there for years, they’ve been seeing a degradation in a number of different ways, which I can discuss later. At this point it’s still remained relatively pristine. It still an area that has the opportunity to be developed in a correct manner and not go the way of the Everglades. The Everglades have seen a reduction of 90 to 95% of its wading birds since they’ve enter into projects in the Everglades in terms of changing its water flow. The Pantanal, if it’s done correctly, could avoid those pitfalls. Out job in the Waterland Research Institute is to gather experts together to work with the governments there, etc… to provide strategies and plans for the sustainable development of the Pantanal. So the Pantanal can be developed in a sustainable way. The people there are in pretty bad shape, I mean in terms of educational levels, and job availability and financial aspects, and infrastructure. So it can be developed in a way that will not cause irreparable harm to the Pantanal. In terms of what the Pantanal’s facing, the population is expected to double by 2025. There’s problems there in terms of loss of biodiversity. A lot of it’s through poaching. Originally it was poaching of caiman, a type of alligator that is there. That’s been largely stopped, and they’ve rebounded, but there’s still poaching of the large animals particularly the jaguar. There’s capturing of the wild birds for resale, a lot of them on the Brazilian market. There’s problems with water pollution, both from the gold mining operations that are in the area the mercury from the processing of the gold. The mercury’s getting into the system. There’s a problem with a lot of the agrochemicals. The Pantanal ? and this is one of the most significant facts that you can mention in terms of the Pantanal ? 99/% of the Brazilian Pantanal ? is privately owned. It’s mostly large farms that are in the area. There’s very little area that’s protected publicly. There’s one large national park in the north Pantanal and one state park, again in the North Pantanal. So there’s very little that’s protected. So there have to be ways to be able to strategize, to be able to protect the area and prevent against pollution, etc? with that particular dynamic of being privately owned. There’s also problems in terms of the sedimentation because of clear cutting, and because of the farming operations in the area with significant sedimentation, in particular in the Taquari River basin. It’s totally changed over the last ten years. People who have gone with us on fact-finding tours ten years ago- that’s another thing that Waterland Research Institute is about, sending people out on fact-finding tours ? have seen the water change significantly in the Taquari River Basin because of sedimentation. In these areas that they used to be able to travel through, they just can’t travel through any longer. There were a lot of fisheries that were going on that are no longer going on because of the heavy sedimentation. That’s one of the problems that the Pantanal is facing.

ES:

FS: So what’s happening ? now this is a significant issue also ? in the Pantanal itself, we’re not talking about cutting the trees down there so that there’s a lot of erosion, there’s a lot of land getting washed into the river, but mainly in the highlands, outside of the Pantanal. The whole basin is called the Upper Paraguay River Basin. The Pantanal makes up one third of that. The Pantanal is the lowland area, the basin area that floods every year. During the rainy season, about six months out of the year, the area floods. The upper areas outside the Pantanal, the highland area, there’s a lot of development taking place in that area. There’s clear cutting of trees, for example, along the riverbank. Now these things are actually prohibited by law. Brazil, in particular, has some good environmental laws. The problem is enforcement. In terms of all the issues I’ve talked about, in terms of poaching, in terms of mercury getting into the water system, there are good laws against those things. Enforcement is very, very difficult. We’re talking about a frontier area in Brazil. So there’s clear cutting along the highland area. When the heavy rains come it washes in the soil into the river, and we get a lot of sedimentation, a lot of the soil building up in the river system, building up the river, essentially, changing its pathways, where it becomes very filled. So that’s a very significant problem in certain areas, but particularly the most famous is the Taquari River basin in terms of that.

ES:

FS: Not really, you don’t want to do a show on the Waterland Research Institute, again mainly it’s involved in bringing in experts to discuss the problem, The actual research is being conducted, as I mentioned, by groups like EMBRAPA, and a number of the universities around the area. And some good outside researchers, Dr. Wolfgang Junk, from Germany originally, coming in and having a research team in the North Pantanal. We gather together those individuals to discuss the problem, to be able to assess solutions, come up with plans, come up with means, to see that the development happens in the correct manner, these problems can be taken care of. And we also bring awareness to the international community. So you can get some of the global, supporting constituencies that you see in the Amazon and some of the other areas that are better known.

ES:

FS: No, clearly it’s declining with development. People who have worked in the area for many years, been there for twenty years or more, have been kind of distressed seeing the gradual decline of the area. That being said, because it’s largely cattle farms, cattle farming is problematic for the Pantanal. They largely let these cattle run free, and it’s not as bad as clear cutting, or trying to cut down and plant crops. So it’s not as bad, the Pantanal still remains in relatively good shape. But those other problems that I mentioned, in terms of the sedimentation, chemicals, hydrology of the area, those things have been accelerating. Another part of the problem is that you’re dealing with three different nations. Now Bolivia and Paraguay, their Pantanal regions are relatively untouched, there’s very few people in those areas. Brazil is developing quite a bit. The Brazilian Pantanal has to be able to coordinate with Paraguay and Bolivia. I mean in terms of fishing, they have a certain period when the fish spawn that they do not allow fishing, the months of November, December, and January. Now Paraguay will not have that same rule. Some people will just cross over into the Paraguayan side and do fishing there. So they need some coordination, intergovernmentally, between these nations.

ES:

FS: I glad you asked about that. Now to summarize, Hydrovia, as a project, that was a plan to be able to make a deeper channel off the Paraguay River. Everything flows into the Paraguay River in the Pantanal area. The plan was to be able to make a deeper chamber to get larger ships. Right now it’s very difficult for the farmers to be able to get their products out to market. And they have to send them over land, either through trucking or there’s a very slow train. And it would cut costs considerably if they could send them down via ships. So there’s a plan among the different governments among the area, the entire area, the entire Paraguay River basin to be able to make a deeper channel, so ships can go way up past ##Columba, as I mentioned earlier, which is in the heart of the Pantanal. This would have had, very clearly, a devastating effect on the Pantanal. I think that’s quite recognized. But on the one hand, you have individuals that are concerned with the economy of the area, it’s a difficult situation for the people, and so they’re really advocating for that. On the other hand you have environmentalists who are very concerned that if you did that, you’d be draining water out of the Pantanal. In a significant portion of the Pantanal, the water level would drop; it would change the Pantanal forever and be very devastating. That project was stopped as an overall project. I mean you may read in the newspaper that Hidrovia was stopped, and the governments, particularly Brazil, pulled out of it. But the issue is still there, in a different way, and that is implementing the Hidrovia piecemeal. That is, deciding to do one little area, let’s just dredge this one little area over here. Or let’s just dredge this one river that flows into the Paraguay River. Let’s straighten this one spot here. So, while the major overall project has been stopped, there’s a great deal of concern that it will be implemented piecemeal, and they could get a problem that’s equal to or even greater than the original plan, the original Hidrovia, on terms of impacting the Pantanal. So that remains a concern, there’s no question about it.

ES: Is there anything that you’d like to add for the listener’s of Earth & Sky?

FS: There’s a great deal of hope to be able to develop the area in terms of ecotourism. If it can be done properly, and true ecotourism can be done rather than some kind of pseudo-ecotourism or nature tourism, by getting in people that are concerned with the Pantanal, willing to spend money in the local communities, so they have some economic incentives to be able to preserve the Pantanal. So there’s another potential hope. And in the future, the listeners, not only in terms of developing constituencies that area concerned with the Pantanal, and aware of the Pantanal, but also would go down as ecotourists and see this very beautiful area, to see the beautiful wildlife, to see the beautiful flora and be able to help the area economically in a way that people would want to preserve it. They’ll want to preserve it also gives them some economic incentives in that way.