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Pantanal Wildlife

A Visitor’s Guide to South America’s Great Wetland

Pantanal wildlife guide. Visitor’s guide to South America’s great wetland, covering Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Includes an introduction to ecosystems; a natural history of mammals (including jaguar), birds, reptiles (including caiman), amphibians, fish, invertebrates; and travel tips including descriptions of lodges and where to watch wildlife.

Published:  07th Mar 2025
Edition:  2
Number of pages:  200
Format AvailableQuantityPrice
Paperback
ISBN: 9781784777135
Preorder now
£19.99

About this book

This extensively updated second edition of Bradt’s Pantanal Wildlife remains the most user-friendly guidebook for ecotourists visiting South America’s great wetland – according to Time magazine, ‘one of the world’s greatest places’. Extending across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, the Pantanal is the continent’s equivalent of Africa’s Serengeti: a vast territory brimming with abundant, exciting and photogenic wildlife.

The planet’s biggest wetland – 10 times larger than Florida’s Everglades, 15 times that of Botswana’s Okavango Delta – offers superlative wildlife-watching to enthrall novice and expert alike. In no other New World location can visitors see at point-blank range such a high number and variety of birds (670+ species), mammals (110+ species) and reptiles (50+ species).

Alongside breathtaking gatherings of wildlife – with fur, feather and scale crammed into desiccating water bodies during the dry season – record-breakers of the natural world can be easy to spot here. Visitors have excellent opportunities to watch the New World’s mightiest cat (nowhere is better to see jaguar), the world’s largest parrot (hyacinth macaw), largest rodent (the pig-sized capybara), the planet’s greatest gathering of crocodilians (yacaré caiman) and South America’s heaviest land mammal (lowland tapir).

Both a wildlife guide and a travel guidebook, Pantanal Wildlife is designed for visitors wishing to recognise the animals they see, to understand more about them and to learn where to look for them – but are too conscious of their baggage allowance to bring a shelf-full of reference material. It comprises authoritative yet accessible text by a South American wildlife expert, bringing remarkable animals to life through highly readable snippets on behaviour and biology, derived from the latest science.

Bradt’s Pantanal Wildlife remains the only portable, hard-copy guidebook to focus entirely on the best wildlife-watching experience in South America, the only book to feature all major faunal groups – and the only guide to cover the entire Pantanal, combining up-to-date visitor advice on where to stay, tips on exactly where to look for the most exciting wildlife and insights into getting around in each of the three countries it encompasses. Bradt’s Pantanal Wildlife is the indispensable travel companion – truly a visitor’s guide – to this exhilarating region.

Before ordering ebooks from us, please check out our ebook information.

About the Author

James Lowen (jameslowen.com) has been immersed in all aspects of natural history since he was able to walk, and is now a fully-fledged nature writer, editor, guide and photographer. James has written 15 books about wildlife and travel, landing two Travel Guidebook of the Year awards (plus two ‘shortlistings’), a Nautilus Book Silver Award and a 2022 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing longlisting. A self-confessed South America addict, he became hooked when spending three teenage months surveying wildlife in Paraguayan rainforests. In total, he has spent five years working in this great, wildlife-rich continent and is rarely happier than when seeking jaguars in the Pantanal, antpittas in the Andes or penguins in Patagonia. When confined to the UK, James scratches his tropical-Americas itch by editing Neotropical Birding, the only magazine focusing exclusively on birdwatching in Latin America, and the ornithological journal Cotinga, which also focuses on the New World tropics.

Reviews

“I will be packing this book when I make it over to the Pantanal” – David Lindo (BBC’s The Urban Birder)

“The ideal birder’s companion.” – Bo Boelens, www.fatbirder.com

“A valuable reference for any would-be visitor to South America’s best-known wetland, from the general ecotourist to the less-blinkered birder…” – Cotinga

Additional Information

Table of Contents

Introduction
About this book, What’s in a name?

Chapter 1 The Pantanal environment
Geography and geology. Climate. The human connection. Conservation and threats. Habitats.

Chapter 2 Mammals
Anteaters and armadillos. Primates. Carnivores. Ungulates. Bats. Rodents and rabbits. Marsupials.

Chapter 3 Birds
Ground birds. Waterbirds. Raptors. Guans. Parrots and their allies. Near-passerines. Passerines.

Chapter 4 Reptiles, amphibians and fish
Reptiles. Amphibians. Fish.

Chapter 5 Invertebrates
Insects. Arachnids. Centipedes, snails and crustaceans.

Chapter 6 Where to go
Mato Grosso (Brazil). Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil). Bolivia. Paraguay.

Chapter 7 Top tips
Finding wildlife. Practicalities. Wildlife photography.

Further information
Index