The Amazon gets a lot of attention, but there’s another massive forest in South America: the Gran Chaco. This hot, dry forest stretches across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina, covering 87 million hectares (215 million acres) of land, an area roughly twice the size of California.

Many Indigenous people call this arid landscape home, including the Totobiegosode Indigenous community of the Ayoreo ethnic group, one of the only known uncontacted (or more aptly described as voluntarily isolated) groups in South America outside of the Amazon.

A faction of this group emerged from the forest in 2004, saying that bulldozers and land clearing had pushed them into ever-dwindling fragments of forest where they could no longer survive, according to U.K.-based NGO Earthsight.

“They left the forest because their capacity to survive was diminishing every day,” Taguide Picanerai, head of a Totobiegosode rights organization, told Earthsight. “The forest, the Eami as the Ayoreo say, was shrinking, and when it’s shrinking it’s harder to find water or food, to find the fruit and animals which Ayoreo eat.”

Now, history is repeating itself. In early 2021, members of the isolated group approached the camp of their contacted relatives at night. “Through signs and songs, they communicated their concerns that they are becoming more and more cramped due to deforestation and the presence of strange people in their territory,” Julio Duarte, a lawyer representing the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, told Mongabay.

“My uncontacted relatives are suffering and in danger, because they barely have any space now to live in,” Porai Picanerai, a member of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode who was forcibly contacted in 1986 by a fundamentalist U.S. missionary group (now Ethnos360), told the advocacy group Survival International.

The Dry Chaco: One of the planet’s fastest-disappearing ecosystems

Recent threats to the Ayoreo homeland fit a larger pattern. The Dry Chaco is one of the fastest-disappearing ecosystems on the planet. Forest cover decreased by 20% between 2000 and 2019, according to a study published last year in which researchers used satellite data to examine changes in forest coverage and forest connectivity across the Chaco.

“The rate of deforestation was, is, really, really, shocking,” Noe de la Sancha, an associate professor at Chicago State University, a researcher at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and lead author of the paper, told Mongabay. “I think once you’ve been to the Chaco once, it’s just heartbreaking to see how that is just disappearing so quickly.”

Of the three countries containing the Chaco ecosystem, Paraguay has seen the highest amount of forest loss — more than 4.48 million hectares (11.07 million acres) since 2001, an area larger than Switzerland — as well as the greatest loss of landscape connectivity.

The Chaco, like many forests around the world, has been sliced into forest fragments. Around 80% of the remaining Chaco exists as millions of remnants mosaiced across a landscape of roads, farmlands, and urban development. Most of these remnants are spread out at distances too far apart for native mammals to travel between them.

A loss of connection or wilderness corridors between forest remnants has serious consequences for wildlife. Those that remain lack resources and are more exposed to hunting and poaching. Those that leave their patch of forest are at risk of being hit by vehicles as they cross roads or failing to make it to suitable habitats.

However, the authors stress that although less than ideal, forest remnants are still valuable and worth conserving.

These smaller fragments provide refuge for smaller animals and plants and also serve as stepping stones for the roughly 150 mammal and 220 reptile and amphibian species living there, including black howler monkeys, giant anteaters, jaguars, tapirs, peccaries, and 12 species of armadillos.

“Smaller patches of forest lose the characteristics that allow them to maintain their original qualities [but] this study highlights the value of remnant patches as ‘stepping stones’ to maintain some connectivity for species to move across the landscape and to reproduce,” María Piquer-Rodríguez an expert on the Chaco and a postdoctoral researcher at Freie University Berlin, who was not involved in the research, told Mongabay.

The researchers determined the location of the 200 most important stepping stones for connection between remaining forest remnants. They say they hope that identifying these areas will inform conservation priorities.

Because the Chaco forest is thick, dry, and full of snakes and thorns, to many it is seen as a nuisance, something that needs to be “cleaned.” But the forest is very valuable, Piquer-Rodríguez said, for biodiversity, erosion control (dust storms have occurred after forest clearing in northern Paraguay), climate, and, of course, for the people who live there.

“[The Chaco] is one of the last remaining wild lands on our planet … one of the last surviving footholds where wildlife can still be wild … until very recently, it was at least,” Sarah Boyle, a co-author of the study and associate professor at Rhodes College, told Mongabay. “And from that perspective, we’re just losing so much.”

The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode seek to protect their traditional homelands

Amid the swiftly changing Chaco, the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode are fighting to protect their traditional homelands, some of the last remaining wild lands in Paraguay. They’ve asked for 550,000 hectares (1.3 million acres), of which 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) is contiguous, connected forest. More than a stepping stone, this would be a boulder for forest connectivity.

Their battle for land rights began when a Mennonite farmer drove a bulldozer through an encampment of uncontacted Totobiegosode people in 1991. News of this incident reached the contacted Totobiegosode and prompted them into action. They submitted a formal land claim in 1993.

After nearly a decade of campaigning, Paraguay’s state land institute, known as INDERT, established the Natural and Cultural Patrimony of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode (PNCAT) in 2001, intended to formally protect 550,000 hectares of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode’s homeland and banning deforestation in the area.

However, the very next year, Yaguarete Porá, a Brazilian-owned cattle firm, acquired a 78,000- hectare (193,000-acre) land title within the PNCAT and began bulldozing to clear roads, opening up a new agricultural frontier. In the following years, more companies moved into the PNCAT, cutting trees and pushing the most recently contacted Totobiegosode people out of the forest in 2004.

“We were afraid of the noise from the bulldozers. When we heard them, we fled from one place to another,” Guireja, an Ayoreo woman who is a member of the group that made contact in 2004, said in a video posted by Survival International.

“We thought the outsiders would kill us so we didn’t want to get any closer to the noise. We didn’t know who it was that was clearing the forest … we had to leave everything so we could run faster. The only things we could carry were our children,” she said.

In 2015, the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode presented a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), requesting the official property titles to their ancestral territory, some of which they already own. The IACHR reaffirmed the protected status of the PNCAT in 2016, stating that “the communities in voluntary isolation of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode People are in a serious and urgent situation, given that their rights to life and personal integrity are allegedly at risk.”

The IACHR called on the Paraguayan government to take “precautionary measures” to stop deforestation in the area. The Paraguayan government suggested a process of negotiations known as a “friendly settlement procedure” with the tribe, in order to reach an agreement on the land title.

That procedure lasted for five years. During that time, 42 meetings were held without any results, said Duarte, the lawyer who has represented the Ayoreo legally since 2002.

“The state is not willing to secure or transfer the requested lands,” he told Mongabay.

During those five years of fruitless negotiations, illegal deforestation within the PNCAT continued. More than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of forest were cleared within the PNCAT between 2018 and 2019 alone by the companies Caucasian SA, and a farm belonging to an associate of Cooperative Chortitzer, according to a 2020 Earthsight investigation, “Grand Theft Chaco.”

Earthsight’s investigation linked illegal deforestation within the PNCAT to cattle ranching for beef and leather used by luxury car brands such as BMW and Jaguar.

“The Paraguayan authorities haven’t just ignored the evidence of illegalities. Without bothering to check the facts, they have sought to defend the companies responsible,” Earthsight reported. Paraguay’s state land institute (INDERT) as well as the Paraguay Indigenous Institute (INDI) and the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, did not provide comments in response to Mongabay’s request at the time of publication.

According to satellite data by Global Forest Watch, nearly 100 hectares (247 acres) of land was cleared in densely forested land in the PNCAT between August 2020 and April 2021. Of the two cleared areas, one was close to a lagoon used by the uncontacted Totobiegosode groups, Earthsight reported in 2021. It was after this clearing that the most recent uncontacted group emerged from the forest to speak with their relatives, underscoring the significance of the PNCAT to their way of life.

“What they want is for their mountains, their forests, the environment to be respected, because they live there, because they are nourished from that place,” Duarte said.

“For about 30 years we have been fighting for the protection of our land,” Porai Picarenai told Mongabay. “Before the ranchers came, we lived in peace.”

Fight for Totobiegosode land rights, and some of the last wild Chaco, continues

On April 20, 2022, the Totobiegosode submitted additional information to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in support of their petition for the title to their traditional lands.

Duarte said there’s no specific timeline for the IACHR to issue a resolution, but it will likely do so within the next few months, and almost certainly within this year. The resolution, he said, should further direct Paraguay to halt deforestation and “will bring the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The court can then issue a legally binding ruling.”

The worst scenario that could arise for the Totobiegosode, Duarte said, is that the IACHR decides not to admit the petition at all.

“In that case, the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode would be totally unprotected,” Duarte said. “The state would grant environmental licenses to cattle ranching firms to produce cattle on a large scale, and the Indigenous territory would be razed to the ground in no time.”

But the eyes of the Ayoreo and the world are on the PNCAT. Porai Picarenai and other Ayoreo people living in the Chaidi community are now using technology to monitor deforestation. On cell phones, they can download deforestation and fire alerts from the Global Land Analysis and Discovery program’s satellite monitoring system. Once an alert comes through, community members fly a drone to confirm the alarm.

The project, called “Monitoring of PNCAT with the use of geo-technology“ currently covers 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres), though they hope to extend it to the whole PNCAT territory.

“Early warnings help the community take action,” Atahualpa Ayala, one of the technicians who trained the Ayoreo and has worked on the project since the beginning, told Mongabay. “For example, if the alerts are registered toward the area of ​​the security post, then one or two of the Ayoreo already leave to go see what is happening, like a patrol.”

In light of recent developments, a group of Indigenous advocacy groups have made a public appeal asking for Paraguay to definitively restore ownership of the PNCAT to the Ayoreo-Totobiegoso; expel all companies and invaders from the territory; and guarantee protection for the territory with special consideration to the uncontacted people.

“We denounce the absolute and deliberate absence of action by the Paraguayan State to protect them and give them back the collective ownership of their territory,” the appeal says, “theirs by right and on which they depend for survival.”

The Ayoreo-Totobiegoso have a deep understanding of place and have lived in and protected the Chaco for a millennium, Duarte said. Now, on an ever-dwindling island of forest in an ocean of destruction, securing their homeland is more important than ever, not just for the people, but for the entire ecosystem.

For the jaguars, tapirs, primates, and other large animals that live in the Chaco, large expanses of habitat are necessary to maintain healthy populations. Most of the remaining large areas of forests are within national parks and protected areas such as the PNCAT.

Learning that deforestation had breached national parks and protected areas caused “a panicking moment,” Boyle said. “Those parks are about to go and it’s really, really unfortunate because these are some of the last remaining areas that are wild in Paraguay.”

“Our community is pure forest, until now,” said Víctor Picarenai one of Poirai’s sons who is currently in law school. “You can still hear the cries of the yaguareté [jaguar], one can still hear the nocturnal cry of the animals. That is what characterizes the Totobiegosode heritage area and that is precisely what we are fighting to protect.”

“[The Totobiegoso] are offering to do us a great good,” Duarte said, “which is to conserve 550,000 hectares of forests, of mountains, with all their fauna, with all their flora, with all their biodiversity richness.”

“That is what they defend … not only for the Paraguayan society, but for the entire planet.”

Additional reporting by Mongabay staff writer Max Radwin.

de la Sancha, N. U., Boyle, S. A., McIntyre, N. E., Brooks, D. M., Yanosky, A., Cuellar Soto, E., … Stevens, R. D. (2021). The disappearing Dry Chaco, one of the last dry forest systems on earth. Landscape Ecology, 36(10), 2997-3012. doi:10.1007/s10980-021-01291-x

Banner image of Guireja, an Ayoreo woman outside her house that she was forced to abandon as a result of logging, Paraguay. Photo by Survival International. Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough_

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