“The incorporation of local people as equal stakeholders has become the accepted paradigm for conservation the world over.”
Erika Cuéllar is training local people in Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina as parabiologists with the aim of protecting the extraordinary biodiversity of one of South America’s last truly wild environments, the Gran Chaco. This hot, relatively inhospitable environment has the second-largest forest in South America after the Amazon.
1 million
square kilometers are occupied by the Gran Chaco
90
percent of the savannah has been lost over 40 years
4 million
people live in the Chaco
