The mission to return jaguars to the US: 'We aren't right without them'

[marmar]

The mission to return jaguars to the US: ‘We aren’t right without them’
The big cats once roamed North America but have been pushed near to extinction. Could they make a comeback?

Erin McCormick
Wed 28 Dec 2022 05.00 EST


(Guardian UK) Somewhere among the rocky pinnacles of southern Arizona’s Chiricahua mountains roams the last known jaguar in the US.

The dark-spotted big cat, a male known as “Sombra” to wildlife researchers, wanders between three mountain ranges, hunting for deer and piglike javelinas and, perhaps, searching for a mate.

The last known female jaguar north of the Mexican border was shot by a hunter in 1963, so Sombra’s chances of producing offspring to continue the US population are near zero.

This month, conservationists called on the federal government to stop big cats like Sombra from going extinct in the US by reintroducing jaguars to the region and increasing protections for the animals’ habitat.

The non-profit Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to create an experimental population of jaguars in the Gila national forest, a sprawling, rugged 3m-acre wilderness in New Mexico dotted with pinyon pines. They also called for protections for millions of acres of wildlands in New Mexico and Arizona, including the tracts where Sombra currently lives. .............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/28/jaguar-return-us-america-new-mexico-arizona-rewilding

[Botany]

1. Getting apex predators back into an ecosystem makes the "whole thing" work better.

I wonder about releasing a female jaguar into Sombra's neighborhood might work.

[Deuxcents]

2. This was just on either PBS or Discovery..

They have been trying for years to make this happen but paperwork, educating the ranchers n a whole array of roadblocks made it seem impossible. This is great to read..

[MiniMe]

5. i'm sure if they release a female,

DJT JR will just shoot it. It's his style.

[GreenWave]

3. I thought there was a huge jaguar run to let them cross borders

and you know do the chooqui chooqui thing.

[Hekate]

4. One problem with Trumpistas and other crazies building walls on our southern border...

…is that they block all the migrating animals.

I don’t know where a jaguar run figures into that.

[GreenWave]

6. Jaguar update:

https://therevelator.org/protecting-jaguars-across-borders/

As García-Anleu explains, the boundaries between countries are important for humans, but they don’t exist for animals. Jaguars require vast amounts of barrier-free land and don’t care about man-marked territories. While females stay in one area, males roam across continents in search of food and mates. They crisscross borders throughout the Americas, traveling as far south as Argentina and as far north as Arizona and New Mexico in the United States.

Crossing continents looking for love!

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. I don't think the wall is relevant.

There isn't much wall there. Most of the border is unobstructed.

It seems more likely Jaguars don't get too far north because the environment simply isn't favorable. They tend to stick to forests. The US-Mexico border is mostly desert.

That, and their current range in Mexico is pretty far south of the border.