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You'll find many large mammals in the northern sections of the Chaco ecoregion, so it's not surprising that the Guarani Indian name Gran Chaco implies productive hunting grounds. This vast South American ecoregion is filled with grasslands, thorn forests, and other habitats that support a diversity of wildlife, including pampas deer, Chacoan peccaries, jaguars, pumas, and other large mammals, as well as little thornbirds, greater rheas, southern boas, horned frogs, and many other species.
The Chaco ecoregion covers the northwestern third of Paraguay, southeastern Bolivia, and northwestern Argentina east of the Andes. In one recent year, temperatures in the Chaco ranged from about 60° to 92° F (18° to 33° C), and annual rainfall amounted to 34 inches (865 mm). You'll find several kinds of habitat in the region, although savannas and thorn forests dominate. Quebracho woodlands, more open than thorn forests, are characterized by thorny bushes, shrubs, and cactuses among scattered trees. Isolated tracts of thick, impenetrable primary thorn forest are sometimes left when land is cleared for farming. The understory of primary thorn forest is punctuated with spiny terrestrial plants such as bayonet bromeliads and star cactuses. Throughout the Chaco, you can find occasional tajamars (ponds made by ranchers for cattle) that support some aquatic life.
New species are still being found in the Chaco as more scientists conduct fieldwork there. One relatively recent discovery was the Chacoan peccary, a hoofed, piglike animal. Other mammals in the region include the lesser mara and the giant tuco-tuco, a large burrowing rodent. This ecoregion is also famous for its diversity of armadillos, with at least eight species in the Paraguayan Chaco and ten in the Argentinean Chaco. Many birds fly through the region, including the chaco blue-fronted amazon, picui ground dove, guira cuckoo, and many-colored chaco finch. Scores of reptile and amphibian species crawl, slither, and hop through the region, including the Paraguayan caiman, false water cobra, and the Argentine walking frog.
Heavy cattle and goat grazing, accompanied by development associated with human population growth, is altering much of the habitat of the Chaco, especially in the south. New paved roads, built to provide easy access to remote hunting sites, open up pristine wilderness for agricultural development. A good example of this is the Trans-Chaco highway that connects Paraguay and Bolivia, which was completed in the late 1990s. For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report. All text by World Wildlife Fund © 2001
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