Giant otters

Pantanal, Mato Grosso do Sul
June 2010

Nice picture! I've never had the opportunity to spot giant otters up on land in the wild.

great pantanal gallery devilfish, one of the interesting things about this area is how the coexistence of ranches and wildlife reserve has actually been put in practice. A very interesting conservation model that other countries could put in practice.

Thanks. I got a couple of shots of them in the water too, but they stayed fairly well hidden from us most of the time.

Thanks, after my exams last week I decided I ought to put a selection of my South American wildlife photos up. I agree that the model works exceptionally well in the pantanal - I was also impressed by a similar model in the Brazilian Amazon, where a group of ecotourism lodges had bought a great tract of rainforest between them and after setting aside small areas for farmland and cattle grazing, they encourage and monitor wildlife on the remaining land. Following very few animal sightings on an expedition in the Ecuadorian Amazon a few years ago, I didn't expect much from the Brazilian Amazon which turned out to be very fruitful, and then the pantanal was just amazing.

You lucky bugger!

What was the name of that reserve in the Amazon? Sounds like a great way of conserving habitats where people and animals need to co-exist.

Pantanal is hard to beat in terms of animal and especially mammal spotting.
I've had the pleasure of seeing giant otters a few times the the rainforest, but you never get as close to them as you get in the Pantanal.

Thanks. We were genuinely very lucky - the only group to get a good look at them for several days.

I'm not sure if the area had a name, I can try and look up the lodge for you if you want. Pretty much all the lodges in the Amazon around Manaus have a similar system whereby some of the surrounding rainforest is owned by the lodge; what made this one special was the collaboration between several lodges which enabled them to buy an enormous area of rainforest.