South America’s second-largest forest, dwarfed by its more prestigious sibling the Amazon, is a little-known victim of a 25-year gradual agricultural invasion.

The Gran Chaco indigenous forest, which stretches over a million square kilometers (386,000 sq mi) in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, is at the mercy of voracious soybean and sunflower crops and grazing land.

Composed of a mix of arid thorn scrub, forests and palm savannas, the dense tropical dry forest contains massive scars — vast areas of deforestation that are being eroded with alarming regularity.

The damage to the local fauna and flora is immeasurable.

In some places, as far as the eye can see, carob trees uprooted by heavy machinery wait to be hauled away and used for charcoal, tannin, furniture and railroad ties, for which this dense hardwood is particularly prized.

Here, in northeast Argentina, around 1,100 kilometers from Buenos Aires, is the country’s agricultural frontier.

Here, the agricultural export industry, so important to a country short of foreign exchange, promotes at the expense of various species of animals, plants and people.

“Virtually all of Chaco province used to be covered by forests,” agricultural engineer Ines Aguirre of the Chaco Argentina Agroforestry Network told AFP.

“But when the technological package of genetically engineered soybeans emerged in the 1990s, colonization of the Chaco zone began.”

Two of Argentina’s top exports, soybeans (30 percent) and genetically modified corn, like sunflowers, are resilient to arid climates, allowing them to thrive in the semi-arid Chaco region.

Deforestation in the region has averaged around 40,000 hectares (154 square miles) per year, occasionally peaking at 60,000, Aguirre said.

“This shouldn’t happen because all forms of deforestation have been suspended in the province,” said Noemi Cruz, Greenpeace’s forest campaign coordinator, while picking up a handful of dusty dirt from a patch of tree-cleared land.

Without the protection of these trees, “the water slides down the surface but does not penetrate the ground during the rainy season.”

Chaco includes a 128,000-acre national park called The Impenetrable, designated as a “red zone” and strictly protected by a forest statute. But there are also “yellow” zones, where tourism and “soft” farming are allowed, and “green” zones, where everything is allowed.

But this law has proven insufficient to protect the forests.

“There is strong pressure from companies and agricultural producers who want to develop more arable land, and there is a permanent international demand for primary materials, especially soybeans and beef,” said biologist and researcher Matias Mastrangelo of the national scientific and technical research institute CONICET.

In the case of illegal logging, “a light fine does not deter logging, and companies include it as a further cost of production”.

This means that deforestation around Impenetrable Park is affecting the rich fauna that live there, including anteaters, peccaries, coral snakes, tapirs and the continent’s largest big cat, the jaguar, which is critically endangered in the region and the subject of ambitious reintroduction is program.

“A forest that becomes a soybean field can no longer provide shelter for the jaguar and its prey. The destruction is absolute,” said biologist Gerardo Ceron, coordinator of the Rewilding Argentina team that manages the reintroduction of the predator.

“In the arid Chaco, we are likely to face very severe impacts from wildlife loss. We’re seeing the extinction of large mammals in particular,” said Micaela Camino, biologist at CONICET, citing the giant armadillo and the white-lipped peckari as examples.

“When a species is lost, you lose what is unique about the species. But also the food security of local families and all the functions that species has served in the ecosystem.

“You are losing the ability of this ecosystem to survive, regenerate and be resilient, which is very dangerous in the context of climate change.”

Not only fauna and flora are displaced, but also local indigenous communities such as the Wichi and Criollo who live in the forest.

“What generally happens is that the rights of these families are violated before logging takes place. They are being expelled (for their land) and forced to leave their homes,” Camino added.

Aguirre says there are solutions to regenerate the lost Chaco forest, starting with replanting the carob tree.

“The carob tree, which is a legume, creates a reaction between bacteria and the roots of the tree that reassembles the nitrogen in the soil. It’s amazing, the growth is incredible,” she said.

But such programs are for later, because now the priority is “stop deforestation”.

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