Latin America and the Caribbean
From Mexico to Argentina, WCS’s Latin America and Caribbean program uses a landscape-scale approach to conserve the habitats of the region’s penguins, pumas, monkeys, guanacos, and other iconic wildlife. Our conservationists work on the ground to protect Latin America’s most ecologically intact wild places, including the rugged coastlines of the Southern Cone, the rainforests of the Amazon basin, and grasslands of the Andean steppe. Encompassing productive fisheries, biological corridors, migratory flyways, carbon sinks, sustainable development reserves, and more, these landscapes are not only vital to Latin America’s biodiversity but to its people and economies as well.
Featured Landscapes
A gift by Goldman Sachs helped to establish this reserve in Patagonia, a mix of peat bogs, woodlands, and snowy mountains.
This rainforest is a stronghold for jaguars, pumas, scarlet macaws, howler monkeys, and millions of migratory birds.
One of Earth’s most sparsely populated regions, this land is the last stronghold of the guanaco, a wild relative of the llama.
Magellanic penguins, southern right whales, and elephant seals rely on this wild, remote expanse to feed and breed.
Vast swaths of intact tropical forests include seasonally flooded forests, which provide habitats for a great variety of wildlife.
This biosphere reserve was created in 1998 to protect the biggest concentration of wild vicuñas and other camelids in Argentina.
The Andean valley of the Cauca River boasts the country’s most fertile lands, which are under pressure from a growing population.
This swath of the Amazon has one of the world’s greatest varieties of trees and a record number of bat, bird, frog, and fish species.
At more than one million acres, this is one of the most extensive remnants of West Indian biodiversity left in the region.