Time to Bring Back Jaguars

Jaguars (Panthera once) once lived in the southwestern United States before they were eradicated by man. The last native big cat was probably killed in 1964. The last female jaguar was killed in 1949. There is a significant amount of historical data to show that the cats were at home in Arizona and New Mexico all the way north to the Grand Canyon.  In fact the infamous colonizer, Sam Houston wore a jaguar skin vest.  Ranchers poisoned the ones they could not shoot and eventually were eradicated by hunting, usually with dogs, and urban development.  The USFWS eventually protected them under the Endangered Species Act but only in Central and South America.  The policy toward the magnificent cat swayed back and forth with the politics of Washington, DC.

Green areas are current habitat; red dots are sightings

The policy landscape was altered in 1996, when a rancher hunting mountain lions came face to face with a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains of Arizona.  Fortunately, rancher Warner Glenn did not kill the feline with "eyes of fire"-- for he knew it was rare.  He did take ten photos of the animal.  His photographic evidence that jaguars were roaming into historic range country was undeniable.

Since then camera traps have recorded the presence of jaguars south of I-10, as recently as March of this year. Several models were developed to show how the feline could repopulate its former territory. The Service only considered the region south of 1-10 could only support six jaguars--not a sustainable number. Several prominent conservationists considered the repopulation of jaguars to the borderlands to be a waste of resources better spent preserving breeding populations south of the border.

More recent scientific work sees the potential habitat for jaguars expanding dramatically. Three recent computer models show a vast area of mountainous central Arizona and New Mexico between Flagstaff and Silver City to be good jaguar lands. There is over 20 million acres in this region, 68% of which is managed by the federal government The new estimate is that 90-150 jaguars could live there sustainably. But with the construction of Trump's Folly, jaguars will need human help to move three hundred miles north from Mexico's breeding population in Sonora. Reintroductions in other countries have been successful.There are perhaps only two natural corridors for jaguars to migrate north, one of which is the remote Guadalupe Canyon that was bisected by the Folly. Two males were photographed within two miles of the border near Guadalupe. Leaving repopulation to Nature would take a significant amount of time and luck. Sonora has an estimated 4800 jaguars, but populations are decreasing rapidly. The cat is on the IUCN's Red List as near threatened.

Its time to make amends for what was done to the iconic big cat of the Americas. Wildlife has been, and still is being eradicated or an industrial scale. Given a chance and a helping hand, jaguars can be more than just a football team in the USA.  Nature is ready.