Apex predators, their prey, and myriad bird species – rewilding of wetlands in Argentina, best seen on a horseback safari, makes them a top tourist draw

Extinct for 70 years, jaguar big cats are back in the Iberá Wetlands, along with macaws and giant otters, thanks to the vision of a conservation-minded couple

Apparel firm bosses Kristine and the late Doug Tompkins began buying up farmland and restoring Iberá’s breathtaking biodiversity. Now it’s a top tourist draw

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Argentina’s Ibera Wetlands, a 13,000 square kilometre expanse once derided as wasteland but whose biodiversity has been restored through the creation of a national park and rewilding - reintroducing animals such as the jaguar and birds such as macaws. Photo: Daniel Allen

Published: 6:15pm, 29 Apr 2023Updated: 1:35pm, 5 May 2023

It takes an early evening flight low over the Iberá Wetlands to fully appreciate their scale and splendour. With the sun hugging the horizon, the golden-hued lagoons and creeks of this boundless watery labyrinth glint and sparkle, as the last flocks of egret and ibis return home to roost in the marshes below.

If Botswana’s Okavango Delta and the sweeping Serengeti had a child together, it might look a bit like this wondrous and watery corner of northeast Argentina.

Located in remote Corrientes province, nearly 700km north of the national capital, Buenos Aires, and a stone’s throw from the border with Paraguay, the Iberá Wetlands (Esteros del Iberá) are a 13,000 sq km (5,000 square mile) wilderness of floodplain, grassland and subtropical forest, of which about 7,500 sq km are protected as the Great Iberá Park.

The mighty Paraná – South America’s second-longest river, after the Amazon – once flowed through Iberá, but has now moved westward. It left behind one of the most important freshwater wetlands on the continent, surpassed in size only by the celebrated Brazilian Pantanal.

30 years ago there were hardly any large wild animals at all

Sofia Heinonen, a biologist and executive director of Fundación Rewilding Argentina

In the language of the Guaraní, an indigenous people living mostly in Paraguay and northern Argentina, iberá means “brilliant waters”. It would be hard to come up with a more fitting description.