The Jaguar Rivers Initiative: A New South American Conservation Alliance to Restore the Paraná River Basin
The Rio Grande. The Iguazú River. The Rhine. Very often in today’s world, rivers divide countries as borders, rather than connect them. Now, a new conservation initiative is turning that on its head, harnessing the power and connectivity of rivers to reactivate a vast, cross-country ecological corridor in the heart of South America.
The Jaguar Rivers Initiative, launched yesterday during New York City’s Climate Week, is a 20-year plan to protect, restore, and reconnect the Paraná River Basin. South America’s second-largest freshwater system, the Paraná River Basin spans four countries, is home to extraordinary biodiversity, and sustains over 100 million people.
The Jaguar Rivers Initiative aims to restore the Paraná River Basin, which spans Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay
Despite its importance, the basin faces a myriad of threats – including deforestation, damming, destructive agricultural practices, and climate change. The Jaguar Rivers Initiative aims to change this fate through a pioneering model of conservation that crosses borders and reconnects ecosystems on a continental scale.
Freyja has joined as a catalytic funder with our support focused on Bolivia, where we are partnering with NATIVA to reduce threats – especially through fire management – and to support protection and management of the Yungas cloud forest.
-lucas-morgado.jpg)
Named for one of the region’s keystone species, the Jaguar Rivers Initiative aims to help jaguars and other vital species reclaim their historic range (Photo credit: Lucas Morgado)
The Jaguar Rivers Initiative's goals are ambitious. Environmentally, it seeks to recover more than 20 threatened species (including its namesake apex predator), protect critical habitats and ecological corridors, and restore essential ecosystem services like carbon storage, flood regulation, and drought resilience. Hand-in-hand with these goals, the initiative aims to develop regenerative, nature-based economies, cultivate a new generation of South American conservation leaders, and create a replicable model of collaborative, transnational ecological recovery.
To achieve these goals, the initiative operates through five pillars:
Arks
Acquiring and strengthening arks, or protected strongholds where wildlife thrives within vast, intact ecosystems
Buffer Zones
Bolstering nature-based economies and human-wildlife coexistence in buffer zones, where conservation and sustainable livelihoods support both people and nature
Stepping-stones
Securing and creating stepping-stones, restored sites that allow wildlife to move between arks, widening ranges and shortening the distances between critical habitats
Rivers
Restoring and protecting rivers, the natural corridors that ensure connectivity across the entire Paraná River Basin
Governance
Establishing multi-stakeholder governance through a regional framework that secures coordination, capacity building, and accountability across countries
While rivers have often separated people and places, the Jaguar Rivers Initiative shows their potential to reunite us – supporting vibrant ecosystems, resilient communities, and a new vision for transnational conservation. Learn more about this groundbreaking initiative to help rivers become the lifelines of a connected, thriving, and wilder South America.
