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Jaguar Survival Requires Range-Wide Political Will BRONX, New York, February 4, 2002 (ENS) - The bad news is that the jaguar, the Americas' largest cat, has lost more than half of its range since 1900 - in the southern United States, northern Mexico, northern Brazil and southern Argentina. The good news is that the jaguar is likely to survive over the long term in 70 percent of its current known range. Jaguars once ranged from the southwestern United States to northern Argentina. Not considered endangered, threats to the big cats include poaching, habitat loss to development, and competition with people for peccaries, tapirs and other prey animals.
To get a picture of how jaguars are surviving in the modern world, the first ever jaguar workshop was convened in Mexico City in March 1999. Jaguar Cars funded the event, "Jaguars in the Next Millenium," with an $80,000 donation. The event gathered 35 jaguar experts from 12 countries, brought together by the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo, and the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The experts identified and prioritized 51 jaguar conservation areas in 16 countries that are important to the species' long term survival. These areas represent 30 of the 36 regions where jaguars live and range from tropical forest to deserts. The scientists conducted a range wide assessment of the long term survival prospects for the big cats, and set priorities for jaguar conservation areas. They factored in the areas' sizes and connectivity, and the impacts of hunting on both jaguars and their prey. Their findings are reported in the February issue of the journal "Conservation Biology." The research shows that the jaguar is in trouble in two-thirds of its historic range. Part of the problem is that jaguars live in 18 countries and there is no coordinated plan for conserving them. "Biological conservation plans often respect political boundaries more than ecological ones," says Eric Sanderson of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and his six co-authors. "Most countries do not have endangered species legislation of any kind, and if they do, laws are unlikely to be consistent across the 18 nations where the jaguar is currently found," say Sanderson and his colleagues. Such wide ranging species need conservation plans that transcend political boundaries, they say. The big cats are doing best in the middle of their range, in and around the Amazon Basin, the jaguar experts found. But conserving wide ranging species means protecting them in a wide variety of habitats. "Presumably, the ecology of jaguars in tropical moist lowland forest is significantly different from that in xeric deserts because of differences in, for example, prey base," say Sanderson and his colleagues. "The goal is not to determine the most important site for jaguar conservation overall, or the most important site in a given country, but rather to find the most important sites for ecologically distinct populations of jaguars," say Sanderson and his colleagues. "If we are to retain broadly distributed species into the next century, we need to plan explicitly for their survival across their entire geographic range," the experts agree. Sanderson's co-authors are: Kent Redford, Cheryl-Lesley Chetkiewicz, Alan Rabinowitz, John Robinson and Andrew Taber, all of the Wildlife Conservation Society; and Rodrigo Medellin of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City. Funded by a $1 million grant from Jaguar Cars, North America, the Wildlife Conservation Society has created a range-wide conservation program for jaguars. "When we learned that the cat was endangered, it was an easy decision to get involved," says Terri Nelson, Jaguar's dealer marketing manager said in 1999 when the grant was made. "It would not be very environmentally friendly, or customer friendly, not to become involved in the effort."
Dr. Rabinowitz serves as director of science and exploration for the Wildlife Conservation Society, running the Global Carnivore Program which works to save large carnivores worldwide. One of the world's foremost authorities on jaguars and a co-author of the new study, he says the funding from Jaguar Cars is essential to jaguar survival. "Without this type of sponsorship, we're not going to be able to save these animals." A major component of the new jaguar program will be a rancher workshop, helping ranchers minimize jaguar predation on livestock, Rabinowitz said. Previous research shows that jaguars usually avoid livestock animals when contained in fenced areas with cleared pastures. Most instances of jaguar depredation on livestock occur when human activities intrude in the cat's habitat - letting cattle roam outside fenced areas. Still, misperceptions of jaguar depredation persist, sometimes leading to the needless killing of jaguars. Armed with the facts, Rabinowitz and other jaguar experts believe they can show ranchers and other people who live in close proximity to jaguars that the big cats are worth more alive than dead. He has been successful before at persuading governments and communities to give jaguars a break. After two years studying jaguars in the Cockscomb Basin of Belize, in 1984 Rabinowitz had convinced the Belizean government to set the area aside as a jaguar preserve with a no-hunting designation. Today it is the only nature reserve in the world set aside specifically for jaguar protection. A plan approved in November 2001 by the government of Belize to build the nine megawatt Challilo hydroelectric dam on the Raspaculo branch of the Macal River, will impact the jaguars in the Cockscomb Basin. The area which would be flooded by the Chillilo reservoir lies adjacent to the Cockscomb Basin Reserve. The dam would destroy important feeding areas for the jaguar, would fragment its habitat, and would be a "festering wound" in one of the largest intact jaguar sites in the world, Rabinowitz warns. Find out more about jaguar conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Jaguar Advisory Group online at: http://www.savethejaguar.com/jag.html Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Jaguar (Photo courtesy 
Dr. Alan Rabinowitz (Photo
courtesy 