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Count Jaguar
When you put yourself in Dr. Rabinowitz’s shoes, one of first questions you may have come up with was, “How many jaguars are there?”. This is a great question. In order to protect a species and ensure its survival into the future, you need to know how many there are in a particular location, region, country or even continent. The number of individuals or populations is a very important determinant of how healthy the species is.
Some conservation biologists estimate the current jaguar population to be between 100,000 and 200,000. This estimate may seem like a lot, but it is only about half what it was in the 1960s.

But that population figure is just an estimate. Conservation biologists don't really know how many jaguars there are or where they live. In fact, a scientist once said that all we have is a record of where researchers have looked for them, not where the jaguars actually are.

To assess the health of the jaguar as a species, conservation biologists are now working to produce a reliable estimate of the jaguar population. This initial estimate is called setting a baseline. Only by setting this baseline now can conservation biologists know in the future if the jaguar population is rising or declining.

It's hard to count jaguars because they are elusive and live in so many places that are hard to reach. A researcher could walk through the jungle for miles and never see a jaguar, even though many might live there.

There are a number of methods that have been used to count and identify big cats like jaguars. With their trained eyes, conservation biologists explore on foot or horseback, looking for tracks. They also search the ground for jaguar scat, ground scrapes, scratch marks on trees and carcasses of prey. (Jaguars typically crush the skulls of their prey, leaving a distinctive signature on the remains of kill.) For many years, scientists counted their footprints, called pugmarks. They felt they could tell the cats apart because the footprints were distinctive in size and shape. This method, although utilized for many years, has not proven to be very effective, since different substrates (e.g., soil vs. sand), as well as the speed at which an animal is moving, affect the size and shape of pugmarks.

A more effective method for counting jaguars, and other cats like tigers, is the use of camera traps. Find out more about how scientists use cameras to trap jaguars in Self Portraits.

   
 
 
   


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© 2006 Wildlife Conservation Society.