October 10, 2006
Return of the jaguars
Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico.From the NY Times. In fact, the extirpation of jaguars in the USA was relatively recent: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.
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.
Posted by David on October 10, 2006 2:01 PM
Living in southern Arizona, I am concerned about the natural corridors of mountain ranges that run north-south and cross the U.S./Mexico national border - in the situation of the jaguar, the Huachucas in particular. I had a good friend who encountered one in the Vekol range on the Tohono O'Odham Nation in 1964. He was prospecting for a major mining company (copper) and made a backward walk then dash to his pickup. This indicates to me that their penetration into Arizona from Mexico is widespread along the Arizona border.
The northern jaguar enjoys javelina meat. They are known to follow a band and pick them off one by one as hunger strikes, then move on to another band. Javelina are numerous in this part of the state. We should expect the jaguar to be present here even as I write.
Populating this boundary with personnel and barriers, while a deterrent to people and drug trafficking, will in the final result be a major deterrent to natural migratory paths of larger mammals such as the jaguar. People entering the U.S. will take the most remote and difficult terrain -- that hardest for interception and that also used by the Jaguar -- further destroying this pattern.
There is no easy solution here. And there seems there will be no compromise in favor of the animals.
What a mess humans make.
Posted by: Patrick on October 11, 2006 4:19 AM
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