Brazilian firefighters rescued an injured jaguar cub with four burned legs from the Pantanal region, where fires are threatening the world’s largest wetlands.
A group of volunteers rescued the young cat on Friday in the Encontro das Águas State Park in southern Brazil, where fires have consumed almost the entire park.
Local media said the jaguar is a young male who was found extremely thin and weakened.
A Super Cougar helicopter (UH-15) of the Navy transported the jaguar to Porto Jofre to be treated at the Veterinary Hospital of the Federal University of Mato Grosso.
The Pantanal is ten times the size of the Everglades wetlands in the United States. The region is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet with more than 4,700 plant and animal species, including threatened ones like the jaguar.
The area has been hit by record fires this year. There have already been more fires in the Brazilian Pantanal this year than in all of 2018 and 2019 combined, according to satellite data collected by Brazil’s national space agency INPE.
Brazil is also struggling to fight surging fires in the Amazon. The number of fires in the rainforest last month was the second-highest in a decade for August, at 29,307.
Experts say most of the fires are set intentionally, typically by farmers and ranchers clearing land.
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