Decades after the world’s biggest otter disappeared from the country, a kayaking trip revealed a lone male swimming in the Bermejo River
“This really is a big animal,” says Sebastián Di Martino, conservation director of Rewilding Argentina, emphasising the “giant” in giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis). “It can be 1.7 metres long … the biggest otter in the world.”
Until its recent rediscovery, the giant otter was feared extinct in the country as a result of habitat loss and hunting. “Family groups were last seen in the 1980s in the Misiones province of north-eastern Argentina,” Di Martino says. “In the Bermejo River, the last sightings occurred 130 years ago, in 1898.”
