Qualla: Gran Chaco

Gran Chaco: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MRDU08, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Quechua word chaqu means "hunting land," and the name stuck because it was accurate. The Gran Chaco -- a million-plus square kilometers of semiarid lowland sprawling across eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a sliver of Brazil -- supports the kind of biological abundance that once made hunting here effortless. Jaguars, giant armadillos, maned wolves, and the pink fairy armadillo, found nowhere else on Earth, inhabit a landscape that shifts from thorn forest to palm savanna to seasonal wetland without ever quite becoming hospitable to humans. For centuries, the Guaycuru peoples resisted every colonial attempt to control the Chaco, and the land itself seemed to cooperate with them.

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Image: MRDU08 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gran Chaco: A Continent's Second Forest

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Gran Chaco is South America's second-largest forested ecoregion, smaller only than the Amazon. Its character varies dramatically across its breadth. In the west, the Alto Chaco -- the Dry Chaco -- is sparse and punishing, where white quebracho and red quebracho trees rise fro...

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Image: Public domain

Gran Chaco: The Armadillo's Capital

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit E. C. Moody, Public domain. The Argentinian Chaco holds the world's greatest concentration of armadillo diversity, home to at least ten species. The nine-banded armadillo, whose range extends as far north as the southern United States, is the cosmopolitan member of the group. The southern three-banded armad...

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Image: E. C. Moody | Public domain

Gran Chaco: Wars Over Emptiness

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 1.0. The Chaco's political history is a paradox: nations fought bitterly over land that none of them could effectively govern. After Paraguay's defeat in the War of the Triple Alliance in 1870, Argentina fixed its border at the Bermejo River. Bolivia, landlocked since losing its Pacif...

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Image: CC BY 1.0

Gran Chaco: The Last Frontier Burns

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, based on data from the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey., Public domain. The Gran Chaco is now one of the world's most active deforestation frontiers. Between 2000 and 2019, the Dry Chaco lost an estimated 20.2 percent of its forest cover. Argentina alone saw seven million hectares disappear between 1998 and 2023 -- roughly 1,130 hectares cleared per ...

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Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, based on data from the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey. | Public domain