El Impenetrable

The Gran Chaco's interior — the vast, hot, dry forest known as El Impenetrable — covers 7.5 million hectares of Chaco Province in one of the least-visited ecosystems in South America, a thorn-forest of quebracho trees so hard they sink in water, with jaguars, giant anteaters, and tapirs in the undergrowth and temperatures that exceed 45°C in summer. The National Park established in 2014 — Argentina's newest large protected area — covers 150,000 hectares and protects the last intact central Chaco forest, where the wildlife density has been measured as among the highest in South America outside Amazonia.

Parque Nacional El Impenetrable was established in 2014 in Chaco Province and covers 150,000 hectares of central Chaco dry forest, the biome that extends across Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina as one of the world's largest subtropical dry forests. The park protects populations of giant anteaters (recently reintroduced by Rewilding Argentina), tapirs, collared and white-lipped peccaries, maned wolves, jaguars, and pumas — the full complement of large-mammal species that the Chaco historically supported. The quebracho colorado tree (Schinopsis lorentzii), the park's dominant canopy species, has a wood density of 1.2 g/cm³ — denser than water — and was the basis of the tannin-extraction industry that deforested much of the Argentine Chaco in the twentieth century; the park's establishment protected the largest remaining intact stands. Access is via the El Sauzalito bridge from Salta Province or the Miraflores route from Chaco city — both require high-clearance vehicles.