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Pantanal port licence would threaten the world’s largest tropical wetland

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 484–485 (2022)Cite this article

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In the 1990s the stretch of this river that passes through the Pantanal (the Tramo Norte) was dredged, and barges carried soy from Cáceres to Corumbá (in barges smaller than those considered to be economically viable today), but this was halted by a judicial order in 2000. After this, only boats for tourism and local commercial trade navigate on this stretch of the river. Some dredging has continued on a modest scale to remove the yearly accumulation of sediments and allow passage of boats, and in 2017 and 2018 the amount of sediment removed increased substantially.

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Fig. 1: Pantanal biome landscape.

Heideger Nascimento

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), Seropédica, Brazil

    Marcondes G. Coelho-Junior & Eduardo C. Silva Neto

  2. Network in Ecological Economics, Commons Governance, and Climate Justice, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Marcondes G. Coelho-Junior

  3. Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL), Maceió, Brazil

    Luisa M. Diele-Viegas

  4. Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa Pantanal), Corumbá, Brazil

    Debora F. Calheiros

  5. National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), Manaus, Brazil

    Philip M. Fearnside

  6. Ecology Graduate Program, National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA), Manaus, Brazil

    Lucas Ferrante

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  1. Marcondes G. Coelho-Junior
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  5. Philip M. Fearnside
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  6. Lucas Ferrante
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Correspondence to Marcondes G. Coelho-Junior.

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Coelho-Junior, M.G., Diele-Viegas, L.M., Calheiros, D.F. et al. Pantanal port licence would threaten the world’s largest tropical wetland. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 484–485 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01724-z

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