Abstract

Using GIS for evaluating habitat availability for jaguar reintroduction
Track: Conservation
Authors: Carlos De Angelo

The Iberá Marshlands occupy 1.3 million hectares in the Northeast of Argentina. In the last decades, a reduction of human pressures favored the recovery of many species of Iberá and triggered the possibility of reintroducing jaguars that became extinct in 1950. Following a conceptual model and using GIS, we developed a multi-criteria analysis for predicting habitat availability for jaguars. We used the information available about jaguars in other regions to construct two models: the habitat condition model (landscape characteristics, vegetation and prey distribution) and a human pressure model (distance to infrastructures, human accessibility, and cattle abundance). We identified 250000ha of potential core areas for jaguar reintroduction (good habitat and low human pressures) and to detected potential conflictive areas (good habitat but high human pressures). Additionally, >400000ha of Iberá were classified as buffer areas or corridors. GIS constituted a fundamental tool in this first step of the jaguar reintroduction planning.