14 DAY TRIAL // Two rare and endangered jaguars have made their appearance over the past week in two different locations across the Americas, in Arizona and Mexico, respectively. This is excellent news for animal rights activists, who feared that the large felines no longer existed in the US at all. The American jaguar has been captured southwest of Tucson, on a trail surveyed by an automatic camera, while its Mexican counterpart is the first such animal that the country has seen in more than 100 years.
Indeed, in Mexico, jaguars were last sighted at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, the species was thought to have gone extinct, even though, in the past, it occupied a vast territory ranging from the southern part of South America to the middle of the US. By 1900, hunting and habitat fragmentation had reduced the number of jaguars on the two continents to the brink of extinction, and so they were thought to have died off completely in the north of Mexico.
In 1996, however, two independent sightings confirmed that the felines were still present north of the border, and subsequently, in 1997, the Endangered Species Act was modified to include jaguars as well. They were studied via direct observation and remote-controlled cameras, and some scientists attempted to tag them with GPS collars. They have been unsuccessful until now. But the new exemplary, caught near Tucson, has been “endowed” with such a device in the end, and then released.
The scientists who have captured the animal say that it is a 118-pound beast, with a very sturdy construction, and that it doesn't look like it has been suffering from lack of food. “More than 10 years ago, Game and Fish attempted to collar a jaguar with no success. Since then, we've established handling protocols in case we inadvertently captured a jaguar in the course of one of our other wildlife management activities,” Arizona Game and Fish Department endangered species coordinator Terry Johnson adds.