[FEL-L] Border Wall: "You Could Kiss the Jaguar Goodbye"

[BigCatSimba at aol.com]

Border Wall: "You Could Kiss the Jaguar Goodbye"
The New York Times reports that jaguars are increasingly crossing the Mexican 
border into Arizona and New Mexico but are threatened by a plan to build a 
wall between the two nations. If that happens, "it’d be all over. You could kiss 
the jaguar goodbye," said Jon Schwedler of the Northern Jaguar Project. The 
Center for Biological Diversity is fighting the new “Berlin Wall” and pressing 
the government to establish a recovery plan and critical habitat to ensure 
the jaguar has a fighting chance in the U.S.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/press/jaguar-07-12-2006.html
October 10, 2006
Gone for Decades, Jaguars Steal Back to the Southwest 
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
SANTA FE, N.M., Oct. 9 — Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, 
male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico. 
Four of the elusive cats have been photographed in the last decade — one as 
recently as last February — in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges of 
southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
And while no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or how long they 
hang around before sneaking back to their breeding grounds in Mexico, their 
presence has set off repercussions on both sides of the border.
At least 10 organizations are working to protect the jaguar in one or both 
countries. Conservationists are developing incentives to stop bounty hunters in 
Mexico from killing the big cats. Cameras have been set up near the border to 
monitor jaguar comings and goings and, inadvertently, the movements of “mules,”
 or drug runners.
Some environmentalists are pressing federal officials to declare parts of 
Arizona and New Mexico critical habitat for jaguars. But local ranchers and many 
jaguar experts say such a move is unnecessary because the animals show no 
signs of breeding here. 
And then there is the fence. If the Border Patrol builds a 700-mile barrier 
in the region to deter illegal immigration, the natural corridors used by 
jaguars and other migratory wildlife will be cut off. 
Jaguars are the largest native American cat. They once roamed much of the 
Southwest, but when ranchers took cattle to the region in the last century, the 
jaguars were trapped and hunted to extinction in the United States. The last 
known resident female was killed in 1963 near the Grand Canyon. 
Jaguars were thought to be gone from the Southwest until Warner Glenn, a 
cattle rancher and mountain lion hunter, saw a live one in the Peloncillos 
Mountains, near the New Mexico border with Mexico, on March 7, 1996.
“I thought the dogs had treed a lion, but when I went to look, it was a 
jaguar,” Mr. Glenn said in an interview at his Malpai Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., 
where his office is decorated with poster-size photos of jaguars and the 
occasional plastic jaguar figurine. 
Mr. Glenn raced back to his mule, pulled out a camera and snapped what seem 
to be the first photographs of a live jaguar in the United States, ever. Other 
known photographs show jaguars that were already dead. Sadly, the same cat was 
killed a few months later by a federal police officer in Mexico, 30 miles 
from the United States border. 
Working with conservation groups, Mr. Glenn helped place trip cameras in the 
Peloncillos in 2001. But within a few years, he said, four of the cameras 
disappeared, apparently taken by drug runners. “And we never got a picture of 
another jaguar,” he said.
That changed last Feb. 20, when Mr. Glenn photographed his second jaguar 
while on a lion hunt in the Animas Mountains.
Shortly after lunch one of the hunting dogs, Powder, disappeared. “Then one 
of the cowboys found him and said he has a huge hole in his neck and shoulder,” 
Mr. Glenn said. “Something had pounded the pudding out of Powder. I thought 
it might be a feral hog or a boar javelina. It couldn’t be a lion. They don’t 
mess with dogs.”
Picking up a scent, Mr. Glenn’s five other hounds took off. He gave chase and 
soon got to within a hundred yards of the commotion. “I looked up and in the 
shade of a big cedar tree, I could see a big cat, dark in the shade. I 
thought, they have a big tom lion,” he said. “I moved in closer. The cat charged the 
dogs. They scattered like quail. Then I saw it was a jaguar.”
Mr. Glenn grabbed his camera and started shooting. 
The jaguar caught another dog, Copper, bit him on the back and released him. 
When the hound Rietta moved in, the cat grabbed him with one paw, then 
another, and delivered two quick bites in the rump. 
“The jaguar could have easily killed the dogs,” Mr. Glenn said. “One bite to 
the head and they’d be gone. But he let them go on purpose.” They were not 
seriously hurt.
Moments later, the rest of the hunting party arrived, helped gather the dogs 
and looked on as the jaguar looked back at them, struck a trot and left. 
“He did not run,” Mr. Glenn said. “He was not afraid of anything.” Later he 
estimated that the jaguar, by the look of his teeth, was eight or nine years 
old and weighed nearly 200 pounds. Mr. Glenn named the cat Border King.
Another jaguar is now being tracked and photographed in southern Arizona by 
Jack Childs, a rancher and lion hunter from Tucson. Mr. Childs first videotaped 
the animal, which he nicknamed Macho B, in August 1996 in the Baboquivari 
Mountains. It left the region that year but came back in 2004, where it now 
wanders along the border. 
Like all jaguars, Macho B has distinct black rosettes on his golden fur. A 
spot on his right rib cage looks like Pinocchio and one on his left rib looks 
like Betty Boop, Mr. Childs said. 
With support from the Arizona Game and Fish Department and other 
organizations, Mr. Childs now has nearly 50 trip cameras along the Arizona border with 
Mexico south of Tucson. Macho B has been photographed 52 times in the last two 
years. “We’re tracking him now,” Mr. Childs said. “He is at least 12 years 
old. We don’t know what he does in Mexico, but we know for sure he goes. We have 
photographed him at the fence.” 
A second cat, Macho A, showed up in 2001, was photographed first, hung around 
for three years and left about the same time Macho B came back, Mr. Childs 
said. No one knows what happened to him. 
As in New Mexico, drug runners in Arizona use the same mountain routes where 
Macho A and Macho B have been photographed. Fourteen trip cameras have been 
smashed or taken in recent years, while six others have been lost to bears or 
flooding.
As for what Macho B does in Mexico, it is likely that he travels back to a 
jaguar breeding area 130 miles south of the border in a remote region of Sonora. 
In 2003, a Mexican conservation group, Naturalia, bought a 10,000-acre ranch 
called Los Pavos, put up a fence, removed cattle, hired jaguar guardians and 
established the first protected habitat for jaguars in northern Mexico. 
Naturalia estimates there are 100 to 150 jaguars in the region, including females and 
cubs. 
Females tend to stay local, whereas male jaguars have wanderlust, said Dr. 
Alan Rabinowitz, a leading jaguar expert at the Wildlife Conservation Society in 
New York City. Males will migrate up to 500 miles, he said, spreading their 
genes as they go. Recent DNA analysis shows that because of such genetic 
mixing, jaguars from Patagonia to Mexico are a single species. 
But the jaguars in northern Mexico are at the utmost edge of the animal’s 
natural range, Dr. Rabinowitz said. The ones coming into the United States look 
like transients, which means it would be “foolish” to call them a resident 
population, he said. 
The Northern Jaguar Project, based in Tucson, is a nonprofit organization 
helping Naturalia increase such jaguar protection in Mexico. The group hopes to 
raise $2 million to buy a 33,000 -acre ranch next to Los Pavos. The current 
owner unapologetically believes in killing jaguars. 
The jaguar project is now in the process of setting up trip cameras in many 
more adjacent ranches. Ranch owners and their cowboys will be paid handsomely 
for each photo of a jaguar.
“Jaguar poaching is a serious problem in Mexico where laws are not enforced,”
 said Peter Warshall, a biologist with the project. More than 20 jaguars have 
been killed in the past three years between the Los Pavos sanctuary and the 
United States border, he said, adding, “We hope people can make more money off 
live jaguars than dead ones.” 
In another approach, some Mexican ranchers in the area have formed hunting 
zones where jaguars are protected and deer are hunted by Americans happy to pay 
for the adventure. 
Moreover, other wealthy Americans are buying ranches on the Mexican side of 
the border with the aim of protecting the natural corridors used by jaguars and 
other wildlife in entering the United States.
In all, almost a million acres in Mexico have come under some level of jaguar 
protection in the last couple of years, Mr. Warshall said, in a patchwork of 
conservation ranching. 
And in New Mexico, Mr. Glenn and his neighbors formed the Malpai Borderlands 
Group, which has withdrawn an additional million acres from development 
through conservation easements and other agreements. The reason two jaguars were 
seen there, he said, is that the land is protected. 
An environmental group based in Tucson, however, the Center for Biological 
Diversity, does not think enough is being done to protect the jaguar. When the 
United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced in July that it would not 
declare parts of New Mexico and Arizona critical habitat for jaguars — arguing 
that the animals do not breed there — the group filed an intent to sue. The 
matter rests in federal court. 
Of course, if the Border Patrol built an effective barrier in the mountains 
where jaguars cross into the United States, “it’d be all over,” said Jon 
Schwedler of the Northern Jaguar Project. “You could kiss the jaguar goodbye.” 
__._,_.___ 

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