A four-hour drive from Brazil’s Barreiras (“BRA”) airport lies the most wildlife-rich tropical dry forest in the New World. Here, at SouthWild’s two “Wolf Camps”, we offer the world’s only guaranteed, close-up viewing in natural habitat of Maned Wolves, an endangered predator that is the tallest and most elegant wild canid in the world. Two other global exclusives at our Wolf Camps are a flock of 12-25 Hyacinth Macaws foraging on the ground at only 8-15 metres and a troop of 10-15 Bearded Capuchins using their own special hammer rocks to smash rock-hard palm nuts on sandstone anvil rocks.
Humans have destroyed more than 93% of the world’s tropical dry forests, making it a much rarer habitat type than wet tropical rainforest, of which 50% remains. Our two Wolf Camps, each of which has only seven spacious double-occupancy, private bungalows, offer the finest viewing of the rare and beautiful wildlife of the world’s largest remaining tropical dry forest, namely the millions of acres of intact forests at the junction of four states of northeastern Brazil: Piauí, Bahia, Tocantíns, and Maranhão
SouthWild is familiar with that region thanks to the work of Charles Munn, CEO of SouthWild, who first visited that region in 1987 to survey the wild population of the endangered Hyacinth Macaws for a joint project of the Brazilian government, World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and IUCN. In 1987, trapping of Hyacinth Macaws was rampant in that region, and in that year Munn met and interviewed the largest Hyacinth Macaw trapper in the world. Luckily, the trapper did not kill Munn, who lived to have the chance in 1994 to flip the master trapper to the good side of the force, namely to give up trapping and to use his great knowledge to conserve and even showcase the very same birds that he had spent the previous 17 years trapping.
This former trapper had learned so much about wildlife behavior during his decades of capturing wildlife that at Munn’s request, he was able to employ all of his special secrets to make it possible for our guests to marvel at close-up views of the most captivating wildlife of the dry forest: Maned Wolves, Hyacinth Macaws, Bearded Capuchins, King Vultures, Blue-and-Gold and Red-and-Green Macaws, Helmeted Manakins, Red-legged Seriemas, Tufted-eared Marmosets, and Black-and-Gold Howler Monkeys. Each species required different, secret techniques that all the university training and advanced degrees in the world could not possibly discover. Only this master trapper, himself the son of a trapper, had all the unique knowledge needed to reveal such a wealth of wildlife for our guests to enjoy.
