What would you do if you were hiking in the American southwest and ran into a three hundred pound cat with spots? Would you think it escaped from a zoo? Most Americans might expect to see a mountain lion, but a jaguar? In the U.S.? One hundred years ago you may not have been so surprised, since this part of the country was home to healthy populations of these large felines. But today, with jaguar populations in decline, a wild jaguar in the U.S. is a different story.
The photograph at the right, showing a jaguar caught in a camera trap in southern Arizona, made U.S. headlines in 2002. It was the first time in six years that a wild jaguar had been documented roaming US soil. While the southwestern U.S. is part of the jaguar's historic territory, there haven't been breeding populations of jaguars here in decades.
So what does this sighting mean? Could it mean that jaguar populations are growing healthier and moving back north to Arizona? Or is the continent's top terrestrial carnivore running out of food in northern Mexico and pressing north out of desperation?
These are the questions that conservation biologists try to answer as they race against time to save the jaguar from extinction. But cats are hard to figure out, especially when they are as elusive and shy as the jaguar. So conservation biologists have their work cut out for them as they try to figure out even the most basic things about them. Even the most simple questions are complicated to answer. How many jaguars live in the wild? Where are they? What do they eat? Do they have enough to eat? Can the jaguar roam widely enough to maintain genetic diversity?
In this module you will learn how conservation biologists go about answering these questions to protect this species and you will use the knowledge that you acquire to develop a conservation plan as you and your colleagues take part in the International Jaguar Conservation Workshop to determine the future of this amazing cat.
© 2006 Wildlife Conservation Society.