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National Geographic : 2005 Aug
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season, it turns into a diabolical, hoof-sucking bog called brejo in the full. Dawn finds our horses postholing through it, withers deep in gray-brown water. There are no cattle in sight, only jabiru storks and wood storks and roseate spoonbills and snail kites and, idling at the water's surface among chartreuse grasses, the ubiquitous crocodilians called caimans. My mare stumbles over one but, unlike me, shows no alarm, and the caiman simply glides away with a sidelong stare. It's a tendon-wrenching, arduous ride, and before the parrots are done squawk ing the morning news from their roosts in the palms, mare and I are streaming sweat and plastered in mud-a gluey gray slurry for which no one offers a name. Midafternoon we rein up at an elevated ribbon of forest. A pungent stink "I can't stand outsiders telling me what to do. But we have to go forward. The Pantanal is changing under our feet." Few cattle roam the Rio Negro Ranch, where onetime cowboy Helio Martins now spots wildlife for ecotourists. Once 692,000 acres, the ranch has been subdivided several times among heirs. Conservation International bought 19,000 acres in 1999, then removed most cattle and built a research center to study species like jaguars and giant river otters. Ranchers increasingly take in ecotourists to supplement their income from cattle. THE PANTANAL 53
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