Geography of South America world by drainage area—the Amazon River and the more southerly Paraná River. The other major river of this central lowland is the Orinoco River, which has a natural channel linking it with the Amazon. Most of this central lowland is sparsely populated because the soils are heavily leached, but in the south is the very fertile pampas of Argentina—one of the world's major food-producing regions where wheat and beef cattle are pre-eminent. The natural vegetation of the northern lowlands are either savanna in the northern "llanos" and southern "campos", or tropical rainforest throughout most of the Amazon basin. Efforts to
South American coati South America. Most of its distribution is in the lowlands east of the Andes (locally, it occurs as high as ), from Colombia and The Guianas south to Uruguay and northern Argentina. Chile is the only South American country where the species is not found. The status of coatis west of the Andes has caused some confusion, but specimen records from west Ecuador, and north and west Colombia are South American coatis. The only documented records of white-nosed coatis in South America are from far northwestern Colombia (Gulf of Urabá region, near Colombian border with Panama). The smaller mountain coatis