Amazonia & Pantanal Brazil

Best of Wildlife & Nature in Brazil

After a few days reviewing the experience of visiting the Amazon and Pantanal in Brazil, let me share with you this photographic adventure through two of the most abundant wildlife regions in the world.

Amazonia

On the one hand, we explore the Amazon rainforest, with its colors, indigenous culture and local flavors. Here, we enter the water system of the Amazon jungle to discover the absolute silence of nature, surrounded by dense vegetation and unique wildlife.

The Amazon rainforest, also known as the Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a expansive tropical rainforest within the Amazon biome, covering most of the Amazon basin in South America. This vast region encompasses 7,000,000 km2 of land, with 6,000,000 km2 covered by the rainforest, and includes territories of nine nations and 3,344 formally recognized indigenous territories.

Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. One in ten known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest and it constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world.

Pantanal

On the other hand, we explore the Pantanal, one of the largest tropical wetlands in the world, located in the western part of Brazil between Bolivia and Paraguay. Here we discovered abundant wildlife and, especially, birds, which was an exciting safari in search of the best moments to photograph.

The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world’s largest tropical wetland area, and the world’s largest flooded grasslands. It is located mostly within the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, but it extends into Mato Grosso and portions of Bolivia and Paraguay. It sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 km² (54,000 and 75,000 sq mi). Various subregional ecosystems exist, each with distinct hydrological, geological, and ecological characteristics.

The name «Pantanal» comes from the Portuguese word pântano that means «swamp», «wetland», «bog», «quagmire», or «marsh». Roughly 80% of the Pantanal floodplains are submerged during the rainy seasons, nurturing a biologically diverse collection of aquatic plants and helping to support a dense array of animal species.