Recent sightings offer hope for jaguar recovery
Researchers worry border wall will obstruct endangered species’ habitats
Deer, javelinas and a black bear filled the screen as Ganesh Marin scrolled through hundreds of photos taken by one of the trail cameras used for his borderlands wildlife study.
His flicking finger paused on one.
“I saw something spotted and I knew,” said Marin, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona, who has been studying borderlands wildlife for over a decade. “I would like to say I started to shout and jump, but no. It was a deep joy to know I am right here in jaguar country.”
A pair of jaguar sightings and the results of a recent study are renewing the hopes of wildlife experts that the endangered species is slowly beginning to recover both north and south of the Arizona-Mexico border.
But new sections of border wall were built by the Trump administration in the middle of the habitats, forming a barrier that conservationists fear could hamper the jaguars’ recovery. Following the Biden administration’s pause of wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, researchers are searching for ways to support the big cats’ return.
“All we have to do is not make things harder for them and get out of their way.”
Aletris Neils
Executive director of Conservation CATalyst
A century ago, jaguars were largely eliminated from the U.S. in part after the federal government subsidized hunting campaigns to target the predator. In 1972, jaguars were listed under the Endangered Species Conservation Act, the precursor to the Endangered Species Act.
A breeding population in Sonora, Mexico, has kept the species from disappearing in North America.
At least seven jaguars, all males, have been documented in the U.S. since 1996, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
An individual cat was spotted by four of Marin’s trail cameras between December 2020 and March 2021. The male jaguar, nicknamed El Bonito, is considered a juvenile, which experts say is rare.
“Males are typically the sex in jaguars that go the furthest looking for new spaces,” said John Koprowski, who advised Marin during the research and spent 20 years as a biologist at the UA. “The fact that you have a young individual tells us there is still a connection, there is still a natural system that is functioning.”
Both Marin and Koprowski hope their recent sighting is the beginning of a new trend that will see more jaguars ranging farther and farther north.
“I’m incredibly excited by this observation, don’t get me wrong, but I think it just tells us there is work to be done,” said Koprowski, who is now dean of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming. “We need more studies and more information so we can make data-informed decisions. So we know what jaguars need to maintain connectivity.”
In January, another jaguar was spotted in the Dos Cabezas and Chiricahua mountains near the U.S.-Mexico border. The cat was first photographed in 2016, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and has been observed on 45 separate occasions since.
While Marin’s study is set to continue for at least two more years, he hopes the results will lead to specific recommendations on how to restore and protect migration corridors for jaguars and other wildlife, especially in areas where the border wall may be blocking their movement.
“If we restore the connectivity for jaguars between Mexico and the United States, we’re restoring the connectivity for other species as well,” Marin said.
On the ranchlands of Cuenca Los Ojos in Mexico, 97 wildlife cameras have been set up and are recording images of animals. Marin, who is leading the project, is using the cameras to study how the border wall and Mexico’s Federal Highway 2 are affecting the movement of wildlife.
Marin is a doctoral student in the university’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment, and is also a National Geographic early career explorer. He is originally from central Mexico and says he fell in love with the arid landscapes of the border region and the diversity of wildlife around its water sources.
The researchers from the UA and University of Wyoming are collaborating on the project with the Cuenca Los Ojos Foundation and others from Santa Lucia Conservancy, National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Phoenix Zoo and Arizona State University.
The results of a recent study published in Oryx, a conservation journal, identified about 20 million acres of land in southern Arizona and western New Mexico that could support more than 150 jaguars in the future — potentially good news for a species that once roamed as far north as the Grand Canyon.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had previously identified a small strip of viable jaguar habitat in the Arizona and
New Mexico borderlands, leaving the onus of conservation on countries south of the border.
The recent sightings near the border, coupled with the results of the study, underline the role that unobstructed landscapes play for the jaguar along the border.
“What’s so incredible and inspiring about this story and this sighting is that jaguars are saving themselves. They are naturally coming back,” said Aletris Neils, the executive director of Tucsonbased big cat conservation group Conservation CATalyst. “All we have to do is not make things harder for them and get out of their way.”
Neils and other conservationists say removing sections of the 30-foot steel fences that were erected by the Trump administration will be critical to the jaguars’ return to the U.S.
“The wall will stop the migration of all species larger than a pocket mouse, and that means stopping animals from finding food, from finding water. It means cutting off populations of jaguars or ocelots that are in the U.S. from their larger breeding populations in Mexico,” said Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The center is one of several environmental groups calling for the Biden administration to remove sections of wall in environmentally sensitive areas.
“As we destroy habitat and build walls and cut off migratory routes, we’re just pulling thread after thread out of this patchwork that is the environment, and it’s just a matter of time until it all unravels,” Jordahl said. He said the new border wall “poses an existential threat to jaguars and ocelots and their survival in Arizona.”
According to Neils, limiting the jaguar’s potential range is especially dangerous for the species’ long-term survival because of the cat’s territorial instincts. She said if juvenile male jaguars like the one recently photographed can’t expand their territory, they’ll be forced to turn to areas already taken by older males.
And when males end up in the same territory, that only increases the risk of deadly conflicts between cats, she said.
“The only way to ensure this population is going to grow and survive in the future is to make sure that the population is contiguous on both the Arizona and Mexico side,” Neils said. “I’m really hopeful that in my lifetime, I will see breeding jaguars back on American soil, where they belong. This jaguar is showing us that these animals are still trying to come back and that it’s not too late.”
Environmental coverage on azcen tral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.