Refuge vital for jaguars’ survival
ASPARKLY Milkyway was casting an eerie lustre over the treacherous outcrops where Cochise and Geronimo had once held out against the US Cavalry.
Eyes accustoming to the velvety darkness were suddenly put on high alert for twinkles at ground level
– the glimmer of big cat eyes.
The rugged peaks and canyons of Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, once the domain of Apache braves, are still traversed by a fearsome array of hunters in the shapes of ocelots, bobcats and cougars.
My nocturnal sortie to seek out elusive whip-poor-wills and nighthawks had just been made more challenging with the ominous warning of the guide: “Beware... we may stumble across a jaguar.”
He did not mean one with a throaty V8 engine but the mythical felid that had given the sports car its name.
Until that chilling moment, with visions of rosette-dappled cats pouncing with powerful jaws open, I had only ever thought of jaguars as marauders of the Amazon rainforest, not all-american apex predators.
On return from my Arizonan adventure I looked up the historical range of jaguars to discover that Tudor explorer Sebastian Cabot had charted them roaming as far north as Ohio. Shortly after the visit came news that a jaguar nicknamed El Jefe – The Boss – had wandered across the Mexican border and into the Santa Rita Mountains on the outskirts of Tucson, some 70 miles from the spot I had been warned about the big cat by my guide.
The nomadic lifestyle of jaguars came into focus last week at a UN convention that holds hope for these spectacular animals in an age when their hold on existence is assailed from all directions.with 40 per cent of their habitat across the Americas destroyed over the past 100 years, jaguars are increasingly in the crosshairs of livestock farmers for killing cattle and poachers who are trafficking their teeth to the Far East for use in traditional Chinese medicine.
Safeguarding jaguars across range states, a geographical area spread through 19 different countries from the United States in the north as far south as Argentina, was one of the headline debates at the United Nation’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) held in Gandhinagar, India, and which saw delegates agree two vital levels of protection for the cats.
The first identified jaguars elevated to Appendix I of the CMS, which recognises them as Endangered and under threat of extinction.
Additionally, jaguars were also added to Appendix II, which requires countries to co-ordinate conservation efforts to save them.
Matt Collis, head of the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s delegation at CMS, welcomed the jaguar’s upgraded status. “This is an important conservation win for jaguars,” he says. “Halting the loss of habitat and destruction of migratory corridors is vital if the jaguar is to survive across the Americas.”
He went on to add: “Jaguars typify the problems faced by large mammals crossing fragmented habitats between national borders.
“Maintaining connections between small sub-populations of jaguars that move across borders is critical to protect them across their range and the place they call home.”
‘Moving across borders is key’