Where trees set life’s rhythm

Birds taking flight from a tree in the Banado La Estrella in Formosa, Argentina. The Gran Chaco is facing growing pressure as large-scale farms producing soy and cattle expand to meet global food demand. — Reuters

IN the vast Chaco forests of northern Argentina, Noole rests from the fierce sun in the scented shade of dark carob trees on a small farm where her family grows watermelons and potatoes to eat or sell at the market.

For Noole, an indigenous Pilaga, and her brother Jose Rolando Fernandez, the trees set the natural rhythm of life, providing food, water and cool in this sparsely populated and remote corner of South America that is home to the continent’s second largest woodland after the Amazon.