A 5-month-old jaguar cub has been spotted along the Bermejo River in northern Argentina’s Gran Chaco region — the first wild-born cub in the region following a rewilding program at El Impenetrable National Park led by conservation nonprofit Rewilding Argentina.
Researchers had suspected a birth several months prior, finding paw prints and other indirect signs, but weren’t able to confirm the existence of the jaguar cub. On July 30, local guides spotted the cub with its mother, Nalá, who was released into the wild in August 2024.
“It was a wonderful day for me,” Darío Soraire, one of the guides, said in a statement. “I had the incredible luck of seeing Nalá with her cub on the banks of the Bermejo River as I was navigating upstream. I saw them and was struck by their beauty.”
Jaguars largely survive today in the Amazon Rainforest and the Brazilian Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, but historically had a much larger range. In Argentina, jaguars have lost more than 95% of their original range; today, an estimated 200-300 individuals remain in the country, clinging on in fragmented habitats.
Before the rewilding program began in 2019, fewer than 10 jaguars, all of them male, were known to survive in the Argentine Gran Chaco. The last time a female jaguar was spotted in Argentina’s Gran Chaco was in 1990.
Since then, three female jaguars have been reintroduced, Rewilding Argentina told Mongabay.
“Wild jaguars are holding out in isolated pockets of northern Argentina, but they need genetic diversity and connectivity to thrive,” Sebastián Di Martino, conservation director at Rewilding Argentina, said in a statement.
“Creating a breeding population not only brings us one step closer to the jaguar’s recovery, it offers the blueprint to extending their comeback throughout the Gran Chaco,” Di Martino added.
El Impenetrable isn’t the first park in Argentina where jaguars have been restored as breeding population in recent years.
In Iberá National Park, a wetland conservation area around 450 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of El Impenetrable, jaguars had been wiped out roughly 70 years ago. Following the release of seven jaguars there, the population has now reached 35-40 individuals, spanning three generations.
Banner image: Nalá and her cub spotted on the banks of the Bermejo River in Argentina’s El Impenetrable National Park. Image courtesy of Pablo Luna.
