After the disappearance of the yaguareté Acaí in El Impenetrable, Chaco, the Administration of National Parks (APN) is now offering a reward of $250 million for those who provide information about the case.
The announcement was made this Saturday, on the International Day of the Yaguareté, after more than a month without information about the female yaguareté.
Acaí had been released on October 5 as part of the reintroduction program coordinated by the Rewilding Argentina Foundation, in collaboration with National Parks and the government of Chaco.
However, just 20 days later, on October 25, the trail of the animal was lost when its tracking collar stopped emitting signals.
APN launched a reward for information about the yaguareté Acaí
This Saturday, the International Day of the Yaguareté National Parks made public the reward of $250 million for information about Acaí.
In particular, this money will be awarded to anyone who “can provide data that allows identifying the responsible for her disappearance,” as detailed by APN on its social networks.
“Every year we celebrate this day by remembering and honoring the great work done for the conservation and care of the yaguareté; but this year is different,” added the organization.
In this way, they seek to break the silence of the area’s inhabitants after Acaí’s satellite collar stopped emitting signals over a month ago in the Río Bermejo.
Currently, various searches in the watercourse have failed to find Acaí’s collar, further complicating her search.
For now, despite a judicial investigation being initiated for the disappearance of the yaguareté Acaí, there are no significant testimonies in the case, something this million-dollar reward seeks to reverse.
“This situation drives us to redouble our efforts so that the yaguareté can once again inhabit freely and safely in the National Parks and their surroundings,” emphasized the institution.
Little information and conflicting versions about Acaí’s fate
Days ago, the federal prosecutor of Sáenz Peña in charge of the case, Carlos Amad, provided details of the investigation.
“We want to know if there is any useful information that allows us to reconstruct what happened,” he explained in an interview with Radio Libertad.
The prosecutor clarified that, despite the speculations about poachers, there are still no concrete elements.
“I don’t have certain elements today that make me think that Acaí is dead, nor that a gang of poachers acted. I don’t rule anything out, but I can’t affirm it,” he stated.
However, the view of the specialists from Rewilding Argentina, who raised Acaí before releasing her, is much more pessimistic.
The experts who cared for her in “controlled freedom” at the Iberá National Park before her transfer to Chaco are skeptical about her survival.
They are convinced that someone killed the yaguareté of just two years of age.
If confirmed, the act would constitute a crime defined in the Penal Code with penalties of up to five years in prison, as the yaguareté is a National Natural Monument.
For his part, the prosecutor valued the environmental damage represented by the loss of this specimen at $2700 million.
The figure reflects the value of Acaí as a National and Provincial Natural Monument, in addition to the cost of the breeding and reintroduction process.
The exhaustive search for Acaí, without results
The search operations deployed so far include various resources and strategies:
- Land patrols in hard-to-access areas
- River tracking in areas near the Bermejo River
- Geolocation analysis of the last point of contact
- Seizure and analysis of mobile devices by the Cybercrime Division
Despite the deployment, neither the satellite collar nor the animal has been found yet.
The terrain conditions, with low population density and areas of dense forest, complicate the tracking efforts for Acaí.
Initially, National Parks reported that the device had appeared in the Bermejo River, but prosecutor Amad denied this information, further complicating the situation.
In this scenario, the reward for information about the yaguareté Acaí seeks to encourage citizen collaboration and prevent future similar incidents.
Therefore, the local communities were called to spread the search and provide any data that may be relevant.
The scientific community and conservation organizations trust that the case will serve as a precedent to improve the security of endangered species in Argentina.
