South America's Kingdom of Water is the world's largest tropical wetland and covers 171,000 sq km of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.
From October to March, floodwaters fill the Pantanal like a giant reservoir and it becomes a network swamps, flooded savannahs and forests - as vital to the biodiversity of South America as the great Amazonian rainforest to the north.
These waters drain out slowly between April and September. Home to 650 species of birds, including rare hyacinth macaws, as well as giant otters, tapirs and the world's greatest concentrations of South America's big cat, the jaguar, it is a region under threat.
- These 9 incredible, brutal jaguar photos reveal the lethal power and fierce cunning of these top predators
- Powerful swimmers with massive heads, thick necks, and paws like sledgehammers, these diving big cats hunt below and above the water. Watch them in action
Climate change has altered the Pantanal's river systems and some waterways are silting up. Meanwhile forest fires, unheard of until recently, turned vast areas to ashes in 2020 with a loss of 17 million vertebrates.
And these natural threats are the biggest dangers to human visitors (an estimate one million people visit every year). On the wildlife side, there have been occasional isolated jaguar attacks on people but more are affected by spider or snake bites or stings from scorpions.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates there are 10 million black caimans – a species of crocodile – living in the Pantanal. Swimming is inadvisable.
