[an error occurred while processing this directive]PARAGUAY[an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive] Paraguay has more than 18 million hectares of tropical forest, very little of which can be classified as true rainforest. As of 1990, about 10 percent of this forest cover was considered primary forest.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] In the 1990s, the Paraguayan government initiated a media campaign to make its citizens more aware of the country's environmental issues, but the efforts have not affected the county's overall deforestation rate, which has actually increased 9 percent since the close of the 1990s. Currently, Paraguay loses an average of 178,600 hectares of forest per year, largely due to subsistence farming and land clearing for cattle pasture. Poor infrastructure has hampered efforts to develop the country's potential timber resources—the value of industrial round wood harvested in 2005 was only about $253 million.

Part of the world's largest wetland, the Pantanal is found in Paraguay. There are concerns that proposed infrastructure projects could damage this important ecosystem.

According to IUCN, less than 4 percent of Paraguay is protected on paper. The country has some 1,084 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles, of which, 1.5 percent are endemic and 3.7 percent are threatened. Paraguay is home to at least 7,851 species of vascular plants

Suggested reading - Books

• The Pantanal: Understanding and Preserving the World's Largest Wetland
• Pantanal: South America's Wetland Jewel
• Paraguay Map
• Mammals of the Neotropics, Volume 2 : The Southern Cone: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay (Eisenberg, John F//Mammals of the Neotropics)

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Last updated: 6 Feb 2006[an error occurred while processing this directive]