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Jaguar - Panthera onca
Topic Started: Jan 7 2012, 01:05 AM (22,200 Views)
animalkingdom
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chui
Nov 3 2016, 10:24 PM
animalkingdom
Nov 1 2016, 11:31 PM
chui
May 24 2015, 07:01 AM
Hey Kurtz, the capture of that male was caught on video which can be seen on youtube. In it Guy Balme clearly says the huge male had just eaten and was as a result 'fat' but was not overly gorged. Therefore while this was still an absolute monster jag this was not an empty stomach weight (maybe 130-140kg empty stomach). Any jaguar over 130kg should be considered exceptional based on tons of data available on this cat's size.


It was probably close to 130 kg or its range empty stomach,still in jaguar weight range of maximum but still a huge jaguar.
The following additional information on this exceptional jaguar may be of interest to some readers. A little while ago I had emailed Rafael Hoogesteijn to enquire about some details pertaining to measurements of jaguar skulls he has published. The conversation led to the above mentioned jaguar which as noted before is probably the heaviest reliably documented specimen of this species. Prof Hoogesteijn was part of the team which captured this huge male and according to him the stomach content of this specimen at the time of weighing can be estimated at 10-15kg. Therefore the empty stomach weight was likely in the 133-138kg range (more or less about 300lb).

As anyone familiar with research on jaguars would know, Rafael Hoogesteijn is a leading authority on the subject and in particular has published the most extensive scientific data on the size and measurements of this species. It is largely due to his efforts as well those of professional hunter Tony Almeida that we have such extensive and complete data on the weights and body/skull measurements of the large Pantanal and Llanos jaguars.

Email from Rafael Hoogesteijn regarding the weight of this huge jaguar.
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Photo of Prof. Hoogesteijn with this jaguar sedated.
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There are also some claimed weights of around 140-150kg reported by hunters but the reliability of these is uncertain and where some indication of stomach content is given they appear to have come from fully gorged specimens. Tony Almeida who recorded very detailed measurements of a large number of adult male jaguars hunted in the Pantanal states in his 1976 book - “no jaguar anywhere will ever weigh more than 130 kilos with empty belly, or 150 kilos gorged”. I think he may have been a tad bit too conservative here but I think barring some exceptions this is generally true. My opinion is that in a given (homogeneous) big cat population, the biggest males would be about 30% heavier than the adult male mean weight for that population with very rare exceptions. Thus at around 135kg empty stomach, the above mentioned male can certainly be considered an exceptional specimen IMO.

Also, the maximum weight sometimes stated as 350lb (~160kg) in some reference books is as far as I can tell completely unsubstantiated. It appears to come from the claims of Sasha Siemel, a famous hunter who published sensationalized accounts of jaguar hunting.
That is one big jaguar of 135 kg,that jagaur could probably beat lioness at parity.
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SETA222
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Jaguar kills large tapir:
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Full story ( in portuguese, use translator ) here
http://www.oeco.org.br/colunas/colunistas-convidados/27858-a-anta-que-virou-banquete-no-parque-do-iguacu/
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SETA222
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Relatively new account of Jaguar predating a caiman in the water that I don't think that has been posted:

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( Pics Ernane Junior/VC no TG )

Source:
http://g1.globo.com/sp/campinas-regiao/terra-da-gente/vc-no-terra-da-gente/noticia/2016/11/onca-pintada-preda-jacare-e-e-clicada-por-fotografo-no-pantanal-do-mt.html
Edited by SETA222, Feb 18 2017, 05:15 AM.
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Grazier
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I'm intrigued by the stuff on jaguars in the US, but it seems they're struggling to get any kind of foothold in the south west, and with trumps wall actually happening that's not about to get easier. I think it's time they were actively introduced, and maybe consider the everglades in Florida, seems like they could really take off there.
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Ceratodromeus
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Jaguar predation on a loggerhead sea turtle

"The loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta (Linnaeus,
1758) is considered a highly migratory species,
distributed in tropical, subtropical and temperate waters
(Bolten and Witherington, 2003; Wallace et al., 2010).
It is categorized as a vulnerable species by the IUCN
Red List, with the main threats being fisheries bycatch,
coastal development, commercial exploitation (e.g.
consumption of eggs), human disturbance (e.g. coastal
lighting) and climate change (Casale and Tucker, 2015).
However, the relative importance of these threats may
vary throughout the geographic distribution of the
species.
In Costa Rica sporadic nesting has been recorded
along the Caribbean coast (Piniak and Eckert, 2011)
including Pacuare, Playa Norte and Tortuguero beaches
(L. Fonseca, pers. comm.). Tortuguero beach hosts a
small population of loggerheads, characterized by very
low numbers of females nesting sporadically throughout
the year (Sea Turtle Conservancy, pers. comm.). At this
site, jaguar Panthera onca (Linnaeus, 1758) predation
upon nesting females could represent an additional
threat for this species, as predation has been documented
previously on the green turtle (Chelonia mydas Linnaeus,
1758), the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea Vandelli,
1761) and the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata
Linnaeus, 1766) (Arroyo-Arce and Salom-Pérez, 2015).
Herein, we present the first documented record of the
predation of a loggerhead by a jaguar in Tortuguero
National Park, Costa Rica.
Tortuguero National Park is located on the northeastern
Caribbean coast of Costa Rica (10o
32’28’’ N - 83o
30’08’’
W). The park encompasses approximately 29 km of
coastline, which extends from the Jalova River mouth
in the South, to the Tortuguero River mouth in the
North. The beach is bordered by Tropical Wet Forest
(Holdridge, 1969). Elevation ranges from zero to 311 m
above sea level. Average temperatures ranges from 25
to 30o
C, with a mean annual precipitation of 6,000 mm
(Bermúdez and Hernández, 2004).
Jaguar predation on marine turtles was incidentally
recorded at Tortuguero beach since 1956 by the Sea
Turtle Conservancy (Troëng, 2000), during their
long-term turtle monitoring activities. However, in
2005 a systematic study was established by Global
Vision International, who then entered into partnership
with Coastal Jaguar Conservation in 2012, to further
investigate this predator-prey interaction. Both study
teams carried out weekly surveys along the beach to
record the number of predated turtles. Jaguar predation
was assumed upon the observation of unequivocal cues
(e.g. bite marks and puncture wounds on the skull or
neck, dragging evidence, jaguar tracks). For each jaguar
predation event, the marine turtle species and coordinates
were recorded. For a more detailed description of the
methodology see Veríssimo et al. (2012), Guilder et al.
(2015) and Arroyo-Arce and Thomson (2016).
On the 14 May 2014, a freshly predated loggerhead
was discovered at Tortuguero beach (10o
28’18.4’’ N
- 83o
27’57.9’’ W). The carcass was first encountered
at the edge of the beach, with bite marks on the neck
area of the animal, and jaguar tracks present around
the carcass. The following day, the carcass had been
dragged several meters into the vegetation adjacent to
the beach. The organs of the turtle had been partially
consumed, but the flippers and head of the animal were
still intact (Fig. 1).

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To our knowledge, this constitutes the first documented
event of a loggerhead turtle predated by a jaguar, not
just at Tortuguero beach but also throughout its entire
geographical range. Since loggerhead nesting in the
study area occurs very infrequently (1-2 females
encountered per season; Sea Turtle Conservancy, pers.
comm.), the probability for an encounter between
loggerheads and jaguars, and therefore predation rate,
should be very low in comparison with the other species
of sea turtles that nest in larger numbers at the beach
(Arroyo-Arce and Salom-Pérez, 2015). In the absence
of additional evidence, it is difficult to ascertain the
effect of jaguar predation on the nesting population of
loggerhead turtles at Tortuguero beach."
http://www.biotaxa.org/hn/article/view/24892/25870
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SETA222
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" The largest jaguar ever recorded in Mamirauá (but there are larger ones out there)

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Photo taken in 2016. Galego lives for years in the lowland forest of Mamirauá Reserve, but has only been captured and examined now. Photo: Registration of a photographic trap of the Mamirauá Institute.

Manaus, AM - A 72-kilogram jaguar caught in a snare trap surprised researchers at the Mamirauá Institute. In ten years of working in the Sustainable Development Reserve, they had not yet found such a large animal. Okay that in other regions, jaguars can reach almost twice this size. But it is that the jaguars of the Amazonian floodplain are much smaller than their relatives of the Pantanal and mainly of the Venezuelan cerrado.

Galego, as the male was baptized, is 11 kilos more than the heaviest jaguar that the researchers had registered so far and 17 more than the average of the males captured in the RDS, according to what he told the site of the institution the researcher Emiliano Esterci Ramalho, from the Mamirauá Institute. The beast now carries a telemetry collar and is followed via satellite by the researchers.

Biologist Rogério Fonseca, a professor at the Federal University of Amazonas, agrees that it is a large animal by Amazonian floodplain standards. He studies the interaction between jaguars and human populations and says that in the Pantanal, the jaguars reach 100 kilos. But the largest are in the Venezuelan cerrado. The biggest ever recorded was 140 KG, according to him.

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The veterinarian of the Mamirauá Institute, Louise Maranhão, analyzes the health of Galego. Once captured, the jaguars are monitored by means of telemetry collars, which inform via satellite, the position of the animals
Photo: Emiliano Ramalho.


"In the Amazon region there is a greater gene flow than in the Pantanal region. Our jaguar (the Amazonian floodplain) specialized in bird hunting, reptiles and rare mammals. The Pantanal is an excellent mammal hunter, and stands to catch prey. Besides the usual prey, the alligators, "explains Rogério Fonseca.

Life on the water

The monitoring of the jaguars in Mamirauá already showed a different behavior of the animals of this region. Paints that live in the RDS floodplain forest live for about four months on top of the trees during the flood period. On the branches, swimming from tree to tree, they feed and raise the young.

Another discovery made over a decade of studies is that in the várzea there is a high density of jaguars, with more than 10 animals per 100 km². The research is developed by Instituto Mamirauá, with funding from the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

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Photographic traps caught Galician moments before he was captured. It's the largest ounce ever recorded in Mamirauá in over ten years of study. Photo: Instituto Mamirauá.

http://www.oeco.org.br/noticias/a-maior-onca-ja-registrada-em-mamiraua-mas-existem-maiores-por-ai/ ( In portuguese, use translator )

Gorgeous animal.

RE:
SETA222
 
Relatively new account of Jaguar predating a caiman in the water that I don't think that has been posted:


I found a video for this ( facebook ):
https://www.facebook.com/g1/videos/1175125049206245/
Edited by SETA222, Apr 11 2017, 02:36 AM.
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rvhr85
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Jaguar swimming underwater, i guess maybe this is a learned behavior if the zookeepers throw the food to the pond
Edited by rvhr85, Jun 15 2017, 05:12 AM.
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Scalesofanubis
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rvhr85
Jun 15 2017, 04:54 AM



Jaguar swimming underwater, i guess maybe this is a learned behavior if the zookeepers throw the food to the pond
They probably do it in the wild, too. They've been known to eat fish and turtles and things, after all.
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rvhr85
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I knew they could swim, but I did not know that they could dive, or at least I did not know of records documenting that behavior
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RegalRatel
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How agile are jaguars? They seem to be rated lower than tigers and lionesses due to their short legs and whatnot.
Edited by RegalRatel, Jun 22 2017, 10:31 AM.
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Taipan
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Journal Reference:
Hayward, M.W, et al. Prey Preferences of the Jaguar Panthera onca Reflect the Post-Pleistocene Demise of Large Prey Front. Ecol. Evol., 25 January 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2015.00148

Abstract:
Documenting the impacts of the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on predator-prey interactions is a challenge because of the incomplete fossil record and depauperate extant community structure. We used a comparative ecological approach to investigate whether the existing prey preference patterns of jaguars Panthera onca were potentially affected by the Pleistocene extinctions in the Americas compared with large felids in Africa and Asia. We reviewed the literature and found 25 studies reporting 3214 jaguar kills recorded throughout the species' distribution. We found that jaguars significantly preferred capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris and giant anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla, and avoided agoutis, carnivorans, primates, black-eared opossum Didelphis marsupialis and tapirs. Generalized linear models showed that jaguars select prey primarily based on socio-ecological and behavioral traits (abundance and herd size), rather than morphological characteristics (body size). Nonetheless, their accessible prey weight range was 6–60 kg, preferred prey weight range was 45–85 kg, and mean mass of significantly preferred prey was 32 ± 13 kg leading to a predator to prey body mass ratio of 1:0.53, which is much less than that of other solitary felids (although 1:0.84 may be the relationship with the smallest jaguars). Compared with other large, solitary felids, jaguars have an unusual predator to prey body mass ratio, show limited effect of prey morphology as a driver of prey selection, lack evidence of optimal foraging beyond their preferred prey, and a lack of preferential hunting on Cetartiodactyla herbivores. These features, coupled with the reduction in jaguar body mass since the Pleistocene, suggest that the loss of larger potential prey items within the preferred and accessible weight ranges at the end-Pleistocene still affects jaguar predatory behavior. It may be that jaguars survived this mass extinction event by preferentially preying on relatively small species.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2015.00148/full
Edited by Taipan, Nov 8 2017, 07:51 PM.
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Ntwadumela
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https://www.instagram.com/p/BbNQR35Aj5s/?hl=pt-br&taken-by=larissa_pantanal

Two female jaguars fighting in Pantanal
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Taipan
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Jaguar conservation depends on neighbors' attitudes

December 28, 2017, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Posted Image
A jaguar named Aquiles caught in a camera trap image taken in Cana, Panama. The number one cause of jaguar deaths in Panama is retaliation for livestock predation. Enclosing livestock in corrals during the night can significantly reduce encounters with predators. Credit: Ricardo Moreno

According to a new survey of residents living near two major national parks in Panama, jaguars deserve increased protection. Nature and wildlife are considered national treasures. But because most residents still support road-building in the parks, the survey team—including Ricardo Moreno, a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute research associate—recommends further education to emphasize the connection between healthy ecosystems and jaguar survival.

"Attitudes of stakeholder groups are especially important to consider, as they can significantly affect policy, thus making the foundations of carnivore management as social and political as they are scientific," the study concludes.

Cerro Hoya National Park is an isolated tropical forest remnant (325 square kilometers, 125 square miles) on Panama's Pacific coast, whereas Darién National Park is Panama's most extensive park (5,790 square kilometers, 2235 square miles) in the area between Panama and Colombia, the only gap in the Pan-American highway from Alaska to Chile.

"According to our study, there is more human—jaguar conflict in Darién National Park, probably because communities are near larger tracts of unbroken forest, which is much better jaguar habitat," Moreno said. "Ironically, the respondents' ideas about roads into the parks are likely to increase this conflict and make effective park management significantly more challenging."

Moreno's jaguar camera-trapping work is featured in the new Smithsonian Channel production, Panama's Animal Highway. He was recently chosen as one of National Geographic's 2017 Emerging Explorers.

Posted Image
Ninon Meyer, Fundación Yaguara Panama, inspects fresh jaguar skin. This jaguar was killed by a farmer after it killed several animals on his farm. Ricardo Moreno, research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and founder of Fundación Yaguara seeks funds to compensate farmers for their losses. Credit: Ricardo Moreno


The survey team, including Jessica Fort, Clayton Neilsen and Andrew Carver from Southern Illinois University with Moreno and Ninon Meyer from Fundación Yaguará Panama and the Sociedad Panameña de Biología, surveyed 85 residents of 23 rural communities around Cerro Hoya National Park and 54 residents of five communities around Darién National Park. They interviewed one adult over 18 years of age per household, focusing on residents such as landowners and cattle ranchers, who were most likely to be affected by jaguars.

Retaliation for livestock predation is the primary cause of jaguar deaths: 96 percent of the estimated 230 jaguar killings between 1989 and 2014 were attributed to this cause.

Road building is another well-known cause of environmental degradation. Earlier this year, STRI research associate William Laurance published a paper in Science, stressing the importance of considering wildlife conservation during transportation infrastructure planning, because it is well known in the conservation community that roads "can unleash a Pandora's box of environmental ills, such as land encroachment, wildlife poaching, forest fragmentation, exotic species invasions and illegal mining."

At the beginning of the survey, respondents were asked to identify jaguars, pumas and ocelots from photographs. Only respondents who could distinguish between these species were included in the analysis. In both study areas, the majority of respondents were male. Researchers asked 32 questions to assess their socioeconomic status, personal experience with jaguars, perceptions and attitudes about jaguars and perceptions of the park and its management.

A higher number of respondents in Darién had personally seen a jaguar in their lifetime. Communities in Darién report more livestock losses: Six respondents in Darién reported 33 predation events involving cattle, whereas only one reported a predation event in Cerro Hoya. Nearly a third of respondents at Cerro Hoya admitted to hunting within park boundaries during the previous year, their preferred prey being the collared peccary, Pecari tajacu. No respondents in the Darién National Park group said they had hunted in the park in the previous year, but those who had in the past preferred the spotted paca, Cuniculus paca. Women in the survey were more likely to agree than men that they would be happier without jaguars.

At Cerro Hoya, 71 percent of respondents were worried about the future of the park and 51 percent thought that it was adequately protected. Near Darien National Park, 54 percent of residents were unsure or had no opinion about whether they were worried about the future of the park, but only 35 percent believed that the park was adequately protected.

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-jaguar-neighbors-attitudes.html
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Taipan
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221Extra
Oct 25 2012, 04:59 PM
Jaguar v. sea turtle: when land and marine conservation icons collide


Posted Image
(Jaguar with its marine turtle prey. Photo by: Benjamin Barca.)

At first, an encounter between a jaguar (Panthera onca) and a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) seems improbable, even ridiculous, but the two species do come into fatal contact when a female turtle, every two to four years, crawls up a jungle beach to lay her eggs. A hungry jaguar will attack the nesting turtle, killing it with a bite to the neck, and dragging the massive animal—sometime all the way into the jungle—to eat the muscles around the neck and flippers. Despite the surprising nature of such encounters, this behavior, and its impact on populations, has been little studied. Now, a new study in Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park has documented five years of jaguar attacks on marine turtles—and finds these encounters are not only more common than expected, but on the rise.

"Although there are records of marine turtles predation by jaguars in other countries nowhere else the numbers of predated turtles are nearly as high. I think that the interaction in itself is very likely to be a normal predator-prey interaction," lead author Diogo Veríssimo told mongabay.com. "But the quick increase in predation observed in Tortuguero that could be a symptom of an unbalance in the ecosystem."

Over five years Veríssimo and his team recorded a total of 676 marine turtles killed by jaguars. The vast majority (over 99 percent) of those killed were green sea turtles, but jaguars also preyed on three hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) and one leatherback marine turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the world's largest. Over the five years, more and more sea turtles were killed by jaguars, rising from an average of less than 2 found per survey to over 5.

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(Flipper of marine turtle killed by a jaguar in Suriname. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.)

"With a minimum of 189 individuals predated in the last season, predation of adult turtles has now reached a magnitude never before recorded in a marine turtle rookery," the scientists write.

Why the sudden uptick in what is considered by biologists rare behavior?

"Several factors could be playing a role," says Veríssimo. "One would be a potential decrease in other jaguar prey such as peccaries or deer, as a result of hunting by local populations. Another possibility is that jaguars are being driven towards the coast as habitat is cleared and fragmented around Tortuguero National Park."

Green sea turtles are currently listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List and are imperiled a large number of threats, including accidental bycatch, light pollution, beach development, and both legal and illegal harvesting of turtle eggs. Jaguars are less threatened than their oceanic prey, but are still listed as Near Threatened due to deforestation, prey decline, and targeting by ranchers. So, the rise in preying on endangered marine turtles by America's biggest cat begs the question: what, if anything, should be done?

Veríssimo recommends more research and monitoring before any action is taken. Future research should especially focus on the park's jaguar population, which has been little studied to date. He also notes that though the total number of marine turtles killed—676—may seem high, researchers should not see this as an alarming concern—yet.

"The nesting population of marine turtles in Tortuguero is one of the largest in the world and as such at the moment I do not think jaguar predation is a major threat. Furthermore, we need to remember that marine turtles from this population are still being harvested in Nicaragua in far greater numbers than those currently being predated," he explains, "nonetheless it rests to be seen at what levels the jaguars predation starts to level off as the increase in recent years has been fast."

Jaguar and marine turtle conservationists should begin sharing information, says Veríssimo, to "ensure that there is a landscape perspective when it comes to understanding of this predator-prey interaction."

In the meantime, marine turtles will, as they always have, risk their lives in producing the next generation, and jaguars, consummate hunters, will take advantage of the oceanic reptiles' sudden vulnerability. And nature will continue to surprise us.


Posted Image
(A camera trap catches jaguars feeding on a sea turtle at night when the fateful encounter occurs. Photo courtesy of: Diogo Veríssimo)

Posted Image
(Green marine turtle corpse after being preyed on by a jaguar in Suriname. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.)

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(Green marine turtle corpse after being dragged in from the beach in Suriname. By the next day the jaguar had dragged it into the forest seen in the back. Photo by: Jeremy Hance.)

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0516-hance-jaguars-sea-turtles.html



221Extra
Oct 25 2012, 05:03 PM
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PLATE 1 (a) Green turtle Chelonia mydas and (b) leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea, with typical signs of jaguar Panthera onca
predation, and (c, d) camera-trap photographs of jaguars feeding off green turtles. (All photographs GVI Costa Rica).

Full study for those if any who are interested.


This big cat’s seafood snack is an endangered turtle

Posted Image
Ian Thomson Coastal Jaguar Conservation

By Sam Wong
18 April 2018

EVERY year, thousands of turtles visit Tortuguero beach in Costa Rica to lay their eggs. When the baby turtles hatch, they are easy prey for dogs, seabirds and other animals, but nesting mothers attract bigger predators too.

The first case of a jaguar preying on turtles was reported here in 1981. Since then, reports have steadily increased, and now around 400 are killed by jaguars each year on this 29 kilometre stretch of coast.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831743-600-this-big-cats-seafood-snack-is-an-endangered-turtle/
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Some research suggests jaguars are declining in Sonora amid killings, habitat loss

By Tony Davis Arizona Daily Star | May 19, 2018 Updated May 21, 2018

In one large swath of jaguar habitat in northeastern Sonora, researchers have documented a sharp decline in jaguar detections over six years.

In a neighboring swath, other researchers have shown an up-and-down cycle of jaguar detections over eight years.

These findings caused concern and alarm, but also uncertainty and a broad discussion over solutions at a daylong session held in Tucson last week on the large cat. The species is listed as endangered in the United States and Mexico.

The up-and-down trend occurred in a private jaguar reserve and its surroundings, lying at least 110 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border cities of Douglas and Aqua Prieta. There, conservationists have worked closely with neighboring ranchers to try to prevent jaguar killings.

The sharp decline occurred northeast of the reserve, in an area of Sonora dotted with cattle ranches that’s known for human-jaguar conflicts, including documented jaguar killings.

Mexican veterinarian Ivonne Cassaigne, of the group Primero Conservation that found the declining numbers, described them as alarming. Her presentation featured photos of killed jaguars, including one hanging by a rope in a 4-month-old photo the group received from anonymous sources over the messaging system Whatsapp.

She called for relocating jaguars from Sinaloa, south of Sonora, into the United States to improve this country’s population and for banning a commonly used pesticide in Mexico, where she said there have been some jaguar poisonings.

But other conservationists said the findings don’t show conclusive evidence of a crash in the broader Sonoran population, whose health is considered vital for jaguars in the U.S. and for its own sake.

“The scale of time and space in this research is too small to make a thorough assessment,” said Sergio Avila, a longtime large-cat biologist in Tucson who works for the Sierra Club. “As big as these properties are, I think it needs a much bigger area, or more time to collect information and to broaden the perspective.”

The fate of Sonoran jaguars is of major interest in this country because it’s generally accepted that the tiny number of jaguars seen in the U.S. — seven males since 1996 — needs a healthy northern-Mexican population to thrive.

Avila told the gathering that it’s important to consider jaguars living along both sides of the border a single population: “These cats don’t see political lines, they don’t know where state boundary lines are. They know where the habitat is.”

A total of 12 male jaguars have been seen since 1996 in the borderlands area in both countries, he said. That’s well north of where the latest data was gathered.

These findings were presented in the daylong session on jaguar conservation held at the Madrean Conference. The fourth of its kind since 1994, it was a five-day event in which researchers and conservationists discussed the current state of knowledge on the biologically rich “sky islands” mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and adjacent Mexico.

Specifically, researchers found:

• Northeast of the jaguar reserve, Primero Conservation concluded jaguar detections dropped 71 percent. They compared the period April 2009 to March 2010 to the period April 2014 to March 2015. Their study area covered 170 square miles.
Researchers identified 13 adult males, 11 adult females and two kittens. Primero researchers haven’t yet analyzed more recent jaguar detections, Cassiagne said. “But I can tell you that from 2015 to 2018, the presence of jaguar is lower” in that area than before, she said.

In a “core” area of study, researchers found more than 10 jaguars from 2009 to 2011, she said. From mid-2017 to April 2018, detections have been “cero, none,” Cassaigne said, using the Spanish word for zero.

During Primero’s research, “We were notified of six killed jaguars,” including deaths of two collared animals researchers had been monitoring, she said.

“So, mortality due to illegally killing of jaguars is the main factor in the decline,” Cassaigne said. While some jaguars may have simply moved to other areas, in the past, “We also had others coming in,” she said.

• In and near the Northern Jaguar Reserve, lying about 160 miles east of Hermosillo, Sonora, researchers collected 919 jaguar photos from remote cameras since the early 2000s. Jaguar detections rose into the late 2000s, then declined sharply from 2011 through 2016.
Detections rebounded in 2017 and have risen at a faster rate in the first few months of 2018, said Carmina Gutierrez-Gonzalez, a biologist at the reserve, which is run by the Northern Jaguar Project, a nonprofit conservation group based in Tucson.

The research covered about 196 square miles in eastern Sonora. It includes the jaguar reserve and a neighboring area containing 14 cattle ranches; the jaguar project has paid ranch owners each time a jaguar turns up on a camera on their land.

The photos have detected 23 females, 24 males and 21 whose sex couldn’t be determined, Gutierrez-Gonzales said. She said she’s not alarmed by jaguar detection declines, in part because she believes some or many of them were caused by changes in research methods. Also, cameras on the reserve would get old and need replacing, which could have reduced jaguar detections, she said.

The title of her group’s conference presentation reflected optimism: “Long-term jaguar monitoring in a Sonora reserve reveals healthy reproductive population.”

“I don’t think that they are decreasing in population. They are decreasing in detection,” Gutierrez-Gonzales said.

Randy Serraglio, of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, helped organize and moderate the jaguar session.

Overall, the data is of great concern to Serraglio, “But we need more work, more study, to see trends over a long time,” he said.

“The problem with jaguars is there are so few of them it makes it very difficult to discern trends. You’ve got a relatively small number of data points and a huge area under consideration,” he said. “And you have an animal that moves around a lot.”

With jaguars clearly under pressure in Sonora from habitat destruction, killing and other factors, “That makes it all the more important that we protect habitat here in the United States. We have millions of acres that can provide safe haven for dispersing,” he said.

In a panel discussion at the conference, Cassaigne said that if the U.S. wants female jaguars up here, to bring back the species it needs to relocate some from Sinaloa, where she says jaguars are apparently doing better than in Sonora.

Many jaguar experts say natural jaguar migration from Sonora is the best hope for U.S. jaguars, but, “Our population is not stable. If it’s declining, how do you expect it to disperse?” at least in the short term, Cassaigne said.

Before considering that, “I’d need to see where this has worked before,” countered Avila, arguing that moving jaguars could be a death sentence for them.

“Cats get attached to an area and they will go back to where they came from,” he said.

While Cassaigne said mountain lions moved from Texas to Florida have survived, Avila said researchers for many years used mountain lions as surrogate species to study jaguars, and that didn’t work out.

And while bighorn sheep have been successfully moved to Tucson’s Catalina Mountains, moving jaguars into this country would be a lot more complex, he said.

Virtually all participants agreed on one point: that conservationists and biologists need to work more with ranchers living where the jaguars roam to improve hopes for the big cats and to better understand ranchers’ values.




http://tucson.com/news/local/some-research-suggests-jaguars-are-declining-in-sonora-amid-killings/article_c4157720-d87b-501e-b2d7-fc4904f06de7.html
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