Photos

On a short tour of the Pantanal the jeep I was in was forced to stop by these scrawny cattle blocking the road.
Lots of the land around here is taken up by cattle, and it seemed that the environment had been quite spoilt by them.
The Pantanal is a unesco world hertitage site but unfortunately the protected area is only 1.3% of the Brazilian Pantanal, and much of the rest is in danger.
A quick web search shows information like this ..
"The Pantanal of South America is one of the most immense, pristine and biologically rich environments on the planet. Often referred to as the world’s largest freshwater wetland system, it extends through millions of hectares of central-western Brazil, eastern Bolivia and eastern Paraguay. With its extraordinarily concentrated and diverse flora and fauna, and a landscape spanning a variety of ecological sub-regions, the Pantanal stands as one of the world’s great natural wonders.
This area is an unparalleled wildlife sanctuary of spectacular beauty, an ecological paradise ...." etc
This maybe true of the protected areas but it does not describe a lot of what we saw.

scan from old print