The place

The Pampas form a vast, almost flat plain of deep, fertile soils built from wind-blown dust, stretching from the Atlantic coast inland toward the hills of Córdoba and San Luis. The climate is temperate, with rain spread through the year, more in the east and less toward the west. Lowlands such as the Flooding Pampa of Buenos Aires Province hold shallow lagoons and marshes that fill and drain with wet and dry years. Native grasses grow in tussocks, with few trees except planted windbreaks and ombú. Today much of the land is a patchwork of soy, maize and wheat fields. The sounds are of wind, lapwings, cattle and farm machinery.

History

The Pampas soils formed from loess blown off the Andes and Patagonia during the ice ages. Large animals such as glyptodonts and giant ground sloths once roamed here. People hunted guanaco and rhea on the plain for thousands of years; the Querandí lived near the Río de la Plata, and later Mapuche, Ranquel and Tehuelche peoples moved across the region. Spanish colonisers brought cattle and horses, which spread wild across the plain and gave rise to the gaucho way of life. In the 1870s, Argentina's Conquest of the Desert drove Indigenous peoples from the southern Pampas. European immigrants then turned the grasslands into one of the world's great grain and beef regions.

Why it matters for the living world

Natural grasslands store large amounts of carbon in their soils and roots, and the Pampas support grassland birds such as the greater rhea, pampas meadowlark and tawny-bellied seedeater, along with Pampas deer, now reduced to a few small populations. Wetlands are important stopovers for migratory shorebirds. A study by Baldi and Paruelo (2008) found that grassland in sample areas of the Río de la Plata grasslands fell from about 67 to 61 percent between the late 1980s and early 2000s, while cropland and tree plantations expanded. Grasslands in the Rolling and Flat Inland Pampas have been broken into small, isolated patches; the Flooding Pampa still keeps much of its grassland.

People of the place

Few Indigenous communities remain on the Pampas after the nineteenth-century wars and land seizures, but Mapuche, Ranquel and other peoples maintain communities and claims, especially in La Pampa and Buenos Aires provinces, and descendants are reasserting their history. The gaucho, a mixed Indigenous, African and European figure of the open range, remains central to Argentine and Uruguayan identity. Today the land is mostly owned by large farms and agribusiness firms, and many family farms have consolidated. In Uruguay and southern Brazil, where the grasslands are called campos, ranchers still graze cattle on native pasture, and some take part in programmes that pay for grassland-friendly livestock farming.

What it faces

Conversion of grassland to cropland, especially soybeans, is the main threat. No-till farming, genetically modified crops and demand from Asian markets sped up this change from the 1990s. Pine and eucalyptus plantations have spread on grasslands in Uruguay and along the Uruguay River. Heavy use of fertilisers and pesticides affects water and wildlife. Drainage and changing rainfall cause both floods and droughts; the drought of 2022–2023 was among the worst on record in Argentina. Efforts include grassland-friendly beef certification, the Alianza del Pastizal for grassland birds, and research into regenerative grazing.

Sources

Written for Regenerative Voices from the sources above. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.