In the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest lies the world-renowned Iguazu Falls. On one side of the towering cascades is the Iguazú National Park of Argentina, on the other is the Iguaçu National Park of Brazil. Greened by over 2,000 plant species, the landscape is home to an array of creatures, including the charismatic jaguar. And to the million-plus tourists who visit each year, the region may appear to be part of a vast expanse of thriving biodiversity. But for those like Yara Barros, who know it well, Iguazú’s parks are in fact “an island of life in the midst of deforestation”. Barros is a biologist and coordinator of Onças do Iguaçu, a Brazilian jaguar conservation project. She explains that in the Atlantic Forest’s entire 140,000 sq km there are only 300 jaguars. As many as one-third now live inside the narrow 2,400 sq km corridor protected by the parks.
More widely too, jaguars today are under some form of threat across almost their whole range, which stretches from the south-western US to northern Argentina. According to a study by the Cites secretariat, which oversees the international treaty on wildlife trade, these threats are also increasing. As deforestation and incursions by roads and agriculture expand, the number of prey animals decreases and poachers gain ever greater access to remote areas.
Nor are the big cats alone in facing these linked dangers of deforestation and poaching: the overall abundance of Latin America and the Caribbean’s monitored wildlife populations has fallen by a catastrophic 94% in recent decades, according to the 2022 Living Planet Report. Preventing the illegal hunting of any creature is hard, however, especially when relatively small numbers of park staff are often responsible for patrolling large areas. So researchers and park-staff in Iguazu have been exploring new means of predicting where poachers might strike – and they are turning to new kinds of mapping technology for help.
Back in the early 2000s, rangers still relied on and filled in field reports by hand, says Cecilia Belloni, a long-serving park ranger stationed on the eastern border to Argentina’s Iguazu National Park. “We now use satellite phones in the forest, along with the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (Smart) system and Quantum Geographic Information System for spatial analysis.” Now 20 of the country’s 50 parks are using the Smart system, says Leónidas Lizarraga, geographic information services technician of the Argentine Administration of National Parks (APN). By logging geolocated photos of every shotgun shell found, he explains, the rangers can establish a hunting trail. “[This] eventually allows them to follow its route and find people who are beyond the area of public use.” Poachers also often use fruit trees as bait, notes Belloni, such as the timbó from which the tapir feeds. So by marking (or “georeferencing”) the location of these trees on the software, as well as their fruiting season, the rangers can also better plan their patrols. The APN aims to expand Smart’s use to all the remaining parks by early 2024, says Federico Rodríguez Mira, park ranger of the Iguazu National Park, in charge of the area of operations.
One additional mapping tool could be based on audio. For seven months from August 2018, researchers from Argentina and Brazil used acoustic monitoring methods to map poaching hotspots inside the two national parks. Backed by the Yaguareté Project (the Argentine equivalent of the Onças do Iguaçu’s jaguar conservation project), the research team placed 20 audio recorders inside and around the Iguazú area. The study covered an unprecedentedly large 4,637 sq km area and, by situating the automatic recorders high on trees out of sight of poachers, the team were able to record gunshot sounds up to 2km away from each location. After seven months, they had captured gunshots at 43 sites out of 90, with a range of one to 68 shots per station. The researchers then used this information to generate a predictive map of poaching activity. They also validated their model with field trips to look for physical evidence, such as bullet cartridges and cut vegetation, and confirmed that the predictive map was 82% reliable, says Julia Martínez Pardo, a conservation biologist at the Institute of Subtropical Biology in Misiones, Argentina, who led the study. The practical application of this system could, in future, further help the parks’ rangers efficiency. By cross-referencing the acoustic monitoring data with the ranger’s existing patrol routes, says Pardo, the park staff could establish whether their current tours coincide with the places with greatest gunshot activity. If the maps don’t match, then the patrols could be adjusted.
