Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0536-1807

Date of Award

Spring 6-2-2026

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

First Advisor

Joseph Tumber-Dávila

Second Advisor

Jörg Matschullat

Abstract

This thesis pairs a short documentary film, Umbigo do Pantanal, with a written component examining conservation in Brazil's Pantanal wetland. Six days of fieldwork in Mato Grosso in September 2025 centered on Sandro Sebastião Godofredo, a multi-generational Pantaneiro rancher whose 130,000-hectare property is transitioning from intensive cattle operations toward ecosystem-based conservation and ecotourism. Sandro's account, drawn from interviews recorded on his ranch and along the São Lourenço River, anchors a broader argument about the limits of single-species conservation models in the Pantanal. The dominant jaguar-focused approach concentrates ecotourism revenue in a small portion of the wetland while pushing the costs of jaguar recovery onto individual ranchers. This thesis argues for a conservation framework grounded in the ecological processes that sustain the Pantanal and the people whose livelihoods are tied to those same processes. The accompanying film carries that argument, and the people and landscape behind it, to audiences scientific writing alone does not reach.

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