Brazilian veterinarians heal the burns of a jaguar burnt in a fire in the Pantanal. September 16, 2024

Veterinarian Thiago Luczinski (C), his wife Pollyanna Motinha (L), and colleagues treat Itapira, a young female jaguar, at the Nex NoExtinction Institute in Corumbá de Goiás, Brazil (EVARISTO SA) (EVARISTO SA/AFP/AFP)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Brazilian veterinarians heal the burns of a jaguar burnt in a fire in the Pantanal.

Ramon SAHMKOW

At a shelter for big cats in Brazil, a veterinarian carefully bandages the wounds of a jaguar that was hit by a fire in the world's largest tropical wetland.

While waiting for the animal to recover, its home in the Pantanal continues to burn.

The Pantanal, south of the Amazon in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, has the highest density of jaguars in the world. It is also home to millions of caimans, parrots, and giant otters.

Brazil has been plagued by a historic drought, which experts associate with climate change and which has caused what the authorities have called a “pandemic of fires.” So far this year, around 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) have been burned in the Brazilian Amazon, which corresponds to 1.6% of the rainforest.

The fires are also hitting the Pantanal, a UN World Heritage Site that has registered 1,452 fires so far in September - almost four times the number registered in September 2023, according to the National Institute for Space Research.

Pollyanna Motinha, a veterinarian at the Nex NoExtinction shelter on the outskirts of Brasilia, says she sees more and more animals “at the top of the food chain like jaguars” being injured in forest fires.

“It's not something that happened often in the past,” she told AFP.

The jaguar, the largest cat in the Americas, is listed as a “near threatened” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The Pantanal jaguar, which is found along the banks of the Paraguay River, weighs an average of 100 kg.

It is estimated that there are fewer than 2,000 left in the region.

The jaguar called Itapira was found hiding in a sewage pipe near the town of Miranda, an area badly hit by the flames. All four of its paws were burnt.

Despite her injuries, the two-year-old, 57-kilogram feline should be approached with caution.

Before being treated, she is sedated with anesthetic darts.

Then Motinha, her husband, and fellow veterinarian Thiago Luczinski, and two students clean the wounds and wrap the paws in bags to apply ozone, which acts as a disinfectant and healing agent.

After a month of almost daily care, Itapira's condition has improved.

In the wild, the burns prevented her from using her claws to hunt alligators and capybaras - a large semi-aquatic rodent native to South America.

“If she hadn't been brought here if she had remained in the wild, she probably wouldn't be alive anymore or would be in a deplorable state,” said Luczinski.

But the caretakers are worried about the jaguar's future.

“This animal is safe today, but it will return to a region that is still burning,” he said.

Another female jaguar that suffered burns in a previous large wave of fires in the Pantanal in 2020 was unable to return home from Brasilia.

Her legs were so badly burned that she lost the tendons that move her claws, explained Silvano Gianni, co-founder of Nex No Extinction.

She had two cubs in captivity, one of which will be reintroduced into the wild.

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