Phantom cat of forest and desert, the jaguar slinks
through its surroundings, an optical illusion of tawny, sun-dappled
fur. It manifests and evaporates with hardly a trace amid the
darkness of South American rainforests and the shattered canyons of
the arid Southwest.
By the 1980s, however, a century of
predator control, hunting and habitat loss had virtually wiped out
the cat in the United States. The Southwestern jaguar became just a
legend until 1996, when Warren Glenn spotted one while hunting in
the Arizona backcountry. Six months later, Jack Childs and his
hounds chased another up a tree. Those discoveries earned the cat
endangered species status a year later, but with that listing came
little real protection.
Then this June, nearly 600
biologists, members of the American Society of Mammalogists, signed
a resolution calling for the designation of critical jaguar habitat
and a plan for the cat’s recovery. And earlier this month,
the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, demanding the agency designate habitat and
develop a recovery plan.
Historically, jaguars ranged
from South America to the Grand Canyon and from California to the
Carolinas. They roam broad territories, with a single male
patrolling an area of up to 50 square miles. Sometimes females and
their kittens will share a male’s habitat, but other
trespassing cats tend to face fierce punishment. This sizeable cat,
the world’s third largest after the lion and tiger, remains
largely a mystery, but one thing is certain: It has a bite to die
for. The jaguar’s jaws are so strong that it can crush an
animal’s skull with a single well-placed chomp, and
it’s a virtual “omni-cat”, hunting anything from
fish to deer and even the occasional crocodile. Unfortunately,
however, its menu also sometimes includes livestock.
As
cattle ranching spread West, the federal government ramped up
predator control, shooting, trapping and poisoning jaguars and
other carnivores. Between 1885 and 1959, records for the Southern
United States show 45 jaguars killed, with at least 13 more by the
turn of the millenium. The fur trade also contributed to the wild
cat’s decline, and more recently, spreading development has
fractured its habitat.
The jaguar’s small numbers
and solitary life make studying the animal difficult. Since its
rediscovery, only five individuals, all male, have been spotted in
New Mexico and Arizona. However, every year, as survey methods
improve, researchers report more sightings. Those five known
jaguars have so far been recorded on more than 60 different
occasions, either through remote photography, scat or paw-print
identification.
But the jaguar’s numbers are too
low to warrant recovery, according to the Fish and Wildlife
Service. In 2003, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the
agency after officials determined that conservation of the
animal’s habitat was “not prudent.” The courts
ordered Fish and Wildlife to review the issue. The agency did so,
returning with the “too few to conserve” reasoning.
“A lot of people cloud the issue,” says Bill Van Pelt,
non-game bird and mammal program manager for Arizona Game and Fish,
“because they start looking at individuals versus the
population of the species.”
Establishing habitat in
the United States will not ensure the cat’s survival, says
Van Pelt, because no viable breeding population exists here. The
five U.S. jaguars are part of the Northern population, which occurs
mostly in Mexico. About 100 more live in the central Sonoran
Desert, some 130 miles south of the border. “The evidence
that we ever had (a breeding population in the U.S.) is anecdotal
at best,” he says. “Conservation efforts need to be
focused in Mexico.”
That kind of thinking is
“deliberate amnesia,” says Michael Robinson of the
Center for Biological Diversity. “The government spent untold
amounts of money trapping and killing jaguars in the U.S., and now
can’t remember they were native.”
Other
endangered species such as the Canada lynx and the aplomado falcon
once shared the American jaguar’s dilemma, but both have
received greater protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Thanks to reintroduction programs, lynx in Colorado now number
about 200, and two self-sustaining populations of aplomado falcon
live in Texas, with another population on its way to independence
in New Mexico. But wildlife officials say they have no plans to
reintroduce jaguars.
When the jaguar was rediscovered in
the United States, Arizona and New Mexico appointed a
volunteer-based Jaguar Conservation Team to assess the cat’s
status and oversee conservation. Critics say the team has squabbled
with private organizations over how best to manage jaguars and has
done little to save the cats from threats like an impassable border
fence. In response, several independent organizations have begun
their own recovery efforts. The Defenders of Wildlife helped set up
the international Jaguar Guardian Program to monitor jaguar
populations, conserve habitat, and educate ranchers. The
program’s wildcat photo contest, in Sonora, Mexico, pays
ranchers for shooting jaguars with a camera rather than a gun.
According to Defenders representative Craig Miller, the contest has
ranchers joking that the cats are more valuable than their
livestock.
Last summer, the Jaguar Conservation Team
presented an outline for saving the jaguar that supports the work
of other groups and focuses on habitat conservation in Mexico. But
concentrating only on Mexico would be a mistake, warns Robinson:
“By doing this, we’re writing off our own
ecosystems.”
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