Iberá National Park in Corrientes province in northeastern Argentina is a 758,000-hectare (1.9 million-acre) expanse of protected land comprising a part of the Iberá wetlands with its swaths of grasslands, marshes, lagoons and forests. The region was once home to just a handful of giant anteaters after habitat loss, hunting and vehicle collisions decimated the population.
Since 2007, the NGO Rewilding Argentina, an offspring of the nonprofit Tompkins Conservation, has been reintroducing the species back to the area, most individuals being orphaned pups rescued from vehicle collisions or poaching. So far, they have released 110 giant anteaters back into the wild. Nowadays, several generations inhabit the park, transforming it from “a place of massive defaunation to abundance,” Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation for Rewilding Argentina, was quoted as saying in an official statement.
The project has been so successful that the giant anteaters appear to be venturing farther afield and moving to new territories beyond national borders, such as Espinilho State Park in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul region.
But it's unclear how many:
Last seen alive in the southwest of the Rio Grande do Sul state in 1890, the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) has since been spotted 11 times since August 2023, although the scientists are unsure whether it’s the same one or different individuals. However, the sightings confirm one clear fact: The giant anteater is back.
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Giant anteaters have poor vision and hearing and struggle to escape from fast-moving vehicles.
“When roadkill is added to other problems such as habitat loss, fire and conflict with domestic dogs, it becomes an aggravating factor,” Arnaud Desbiez, founder of ICAS, told Mongabay.
According to data collected from the roads of Mato Grosso do Sul, Desbiez and a fellow researcher estimated that approximately 40 giant anteaters die from vehicle collisions for every 100 km (62 mi) of paved road per year. People are also impacted: Research from the National Initiative for the Conservation of the Brazilian Tapir found that between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024, five people in Mato Grosso do Sul died due to vehicle collisions with tapirs, South America’s largest mammal.
“These roads are causing local extinctions,” Desbiez said. “Our models show that they decrease population growth rates [of giant anteaters] by more than 50%.”
Surveys have found that truck drivers don’t intentionally run over wildlife but have little time to brake, rendering speed limits and wildlife signs ineffective. “The most efficient technique is getting animals off the road,” Desbiez said, by constructing fences in highway areas of critical stretches of wildlife accidents, he added. While some progress is being made to include collision-prevention barriers on new roads, a lack of political will and funding are slowing the process down, experts say.
From the article:
But it's unclear how many:
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