How a Jaguar Doctor Is Saving the Big Cats in Brazil’s Pantanal Wetland
In the world’s largest tropical wetland, jaguars are at risk. This jaguar doctor has a plan to save them—and their environment.
Diego Viana was never supposed to save the jaguars. If anything, he was meant to kill them.
His great grandfather had made a living by hunting the big cats in Brazil's remote Pantanal grasslands. This was nothing personal; it was business. The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, stretching across 42 million grassy, swampy acres, many of them in Brazil. Here, some of the country’s most iconic animals roam free: the anaconda, giant anteater, giant otter, South American tapir, and—perhaps most notably—the jaguar. The Pantanal offers the best chance in the world to see a jaguar, bringing in, Viana estimates, $10 million+ in tourism, but for the local cattle farmers called Pantaneiros, the animal has historically been seen as a threat to their livelihood. That’s where jaguar hunters like Viana’s great grandfather come in.
“Jaguars sometimes prey on cattle, which can lead to financial losses for ranchers," explains Viana. While there was and still remains some fear of the iconic cats and their threat to humans, the struggle between cattle farmers and the jaguar has always been about the bottom line: When jaguars have the opportunity to eat cattle, cows end up making up about a third of the animal’s diet. Because of this threat to the farmers’ financial interests, the predator often became the prey.
For Viana, killing jaguars—out of spite, financial interest, for their skins, or for sport—has never made any sense. He sees it as a tragedy. "Being in the presence of a jaguar is an experience that combines respect, admiration, and a profound sense of humility," he says.
“I understand and respect the culture of the jaguar hunters, but I grew up thinking I need to do things differently,” Viana says. “I always preferred to observe the jaguars rather than hunt them.” Detouring from the family legacy, Viana instead became a jaguar doctor—first training as a vet and then learning how to monitor the movements of the animals in order to protect them. He also began to spend his time educating locals about how to coexist with the big cats. And he believes jaguars can save his economically depressed region from impending ecocide—if only he can get others to believe it, too.
On the edge of the Pantanal, Corumbá is considered the gateway to the wetland. It’s a city of 112,000 people, still leaning on the mining of its vast supply of iron ore and manganese. It was, like most South American river cities, colonized as a place from which to extract natural resources from the vast and untamed jungles. It’s also a major hub for smuggling. Though the conveniences of the modern world have made it a comfortable place to live, this town remains a bit of an extreme place, a remote city on the edge of jaguar territory.
It’s also a town with architectural charm and the wildest backyard on earth. Viana can be found in central Corumbá, not far from the açaí stands along the Paraguay River, where boatmen offer cheap crossing into Bolivia. Here, he works at the Instituto Homem Pantaneiro, an organization dedicated to preserving the Pantanal and the culture within. His focus on keeping jaguars safe, he believes, requires protection of both the region’s cattle and the landscape itself.
The former can be accomplished by safety measures like surrounding the cattle with electric fences, but the latter is a trickier situation. According to Viana, as humans encroach upon jaguar territory and as climate-change-fueled drought turns the grasslands into kindling for wildfires, jaguars are becoming more and more prevalent in Corumbá.
“It’s very hot here, and it’s getting hotter,” Viana says, “Every year, we used to have a wet and dry season. But for five years, we’ve only had a dry season.” Historically, farmers in the area have burned dry grass so that new grass will come in, but dryer weather patterns have complicated things. “In a normal year, we have fires, but rain comes and puts the fires out. But for the past five years, with hardly any rain, there’s been nothing to stop them. And when the fires are out of control, the jaguars come to the city.”
In the city, people harm the jaguars, too, sometimes killing them in an effort to protect cats and dogs. Viana occasionally finds himself called to humanely remove a jaguar, and frequently uses Instagram and TikTok to address fake news related to the big cats. Recently, he posted himself calling out a fake video that showed a jaguar attacking a man stuck in a tree.
But to stop the underlying issues that draw jaguars to the city in the first place, Viana works with the farmers to prevent overfarming and teach them about how to properly conduct controlled burns. He also makes an effort to educate people about the benefits of leaving jaguar habitats untouched by farming: among other things, tourism.
The truth is that compared to jaguar tourism, cattle farming generates pennies. The most recent data, a 2017 study, showed that jaguar tourism generated $6.8 million in gross annual income in the northern part of the Pantanal. The same study found that cattle loss was only listed at $121,500 that year.
Many of the world’s great wild places and species are under threat due to climate change, industrialization, and urban sprawl that forces the taming of the land. The Pantanal is a perfect example of this fact. Sometimes, it takes just one voice to speak out and say there’s another way to co-exist with the natural world to turn that tide. In this case, the descendant of a jaguar killer is showing the people of the Pantanal how to live with the jaguar so the jaguar—and its environment—can survive. And despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary, it seems that change just might be possible.
“Many people have a fear of the jaguar, and they believe that killing jaguars will protect them,” Viana says. “But now we have younger Pantaneiros who see jaguars as an opportunity to earn money through tourism.”
The fate of this land, its animals, and its people—after all—are linked. “Every sighting, every piece of data collected, and every conservation success story drives me to continue this vital work,” says Viana, “seeking solutions that benefit both wildlife and the human communities that share their environment.”