George,
Thank you for the update, this was very interesting to hear the
history of the jaguar in the US. Does anyone know to what extent the
border wall will extend through the mountainous back country and
desert of southern AZ? Does it involve California gulch or Sycamore
canyon? Is there hope of further jaguar crossings or has the fence
put an end to that?
Kevin
On Mar 18, 2009, at 2:26 PM, George Paul wrote:
> Oops.
>
> The accidental trapping, and then purposeful sedation and collaring
> by Arizona Game and Fish, of that jaguar that I reported on last
> month here for the group, has had unintented consequences. The
> collar they put on it allowed them to learn that suddenly, after 13
> years, it wasn't moving around any more. They found it, and
> discovered that their intervention had now made it critically ill --
> with kidney failure, probably from the sedation. They euthanized it.
> The animal, named "Macho B Jaguar," was the only jaguar known to
> exist in the United States. Now are there are none again.
>
> Perhaps this is different sort of "uncertainty principle."
>
> Here is a story and editorial on it in the LA Times:
>
> A federal recovery plan is needed to restore the cats in areas of
> the U.S.
> By James William Gibson
> March 18, 2009
>
> They used to roam a wide swath of the Southwest, from California
> through Texas, but in recent years the known jaguar population of
> the United States had dwindled to one: Macho B Jaguar.
>
> In 1996, the large cat was discovered to be living in the mountains
> of southern Arizona near the Mexican border by a hunter, who managed
> to photograph him. In the years that followed, Macho B's movements
> were occasionally captured by a network of motion-triggered cameras
> placed in the mountainous areas he favored.
>
> In February, the cat was accidentally trapped by Arizona Fish and
> Game Department officials, who fitted him with a radio collar in
> order to better track his movements. By the end of the month, they
> noticed that Macho B was no longer regularly foraging for food, and
> soon he was recaptured southwest of Tucson. Veterinarians discovered
> advanced kidney failure -- possibly accelerated by the stress of
> capture and sedation -- and decided to euthanize him, leaving the
> country with no known jaguars.
>
> During the 19th and early 20th centuries, naturalists wrote about
> many encounters with jaguars. In their 1854 book, "The Viviparous
> Quadrupeds of North America," John James Audubon and John Bachman
> described the patience with which a jaguar waited for its prey at a
> watering hole. And then, "the unsuspecting creature draws near the
> dangerous spot; suddenly, with a tremendous leap, the jaguar pounces
> on him, and with the fury of an incarnate fiend fastens upon his
> neck with his terrible teeth."
>
> But by the middle of the 20th century, the animals, the third-
> largest species of cats after lions and tigers, had mostly
> disappeared. Reduced habitat and prey made survival increasingly
> difficult. And men found glory in killing them -- part of the long,
> brutal war against predators that nearly exterminated wolves,
> mountain lions and grizzly bears.
>
> By all rights, the Endangered Species Act, established in 1973,
> should have protected the jaguar. But although the cats were listed,
> the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service never formulated a recovery plan
> for them or delineated "critical habitat," meaning a designated
> territory in which development was subject to regulation for
> potential impacts. Indeed, officials have argued for 30 years that
> because only isolated jaguars existed, the species could not recover
> and thus the jaguar had no legal right to critical habitat.
>
> The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity has repeatedly
> challenged this interpretation, saying it's a wrongheaded reading of
> the endangered species law. Jaguars would recover in the U.S., the
> center insisted, if the animals were fully protected by all the
> measures the act mandates.
>
> The center's argument -- and it is a good one -- is that jaguars
> should have been managed aggressively, as were other animals that
> had been nearly extirpated from the wild. The California condor, the
> black ferret, the Rocky Mountain and Mexican gray wolves were all
> brought back through intensive federal intervention. Now it's time
> for wildlife officials to create a recovery team for the jaguar.
>
> Scientists should assess whether there are ways to encourage
> "transient" jaguars, which are known to move back and forth across
> the border, to instead stay in the U.S. and reproduce, or to
> deliberately translocate them (the way gray wolves were reintroduced
> to Yellowstone National Park). A recovery plan also could designate
> crucial habitat, such as the Sky Island region of southeastern
> Arizona and southwestern New Mexico and the Gila National Forest.
> They could even recommend U.S. aid to help protect jaguar territory
> in Mexico.
>
> Thirty years ago, in the New York Times, Harvard biologist Edward O.
> Wilson wrote that "the one truly irreparable damage we can inflict
> on ourselves is eliminating a large fraction of the Earth's
> species. ... Our biophilic descendants will regard species
> extermination as the greatest possible sin of the 20th century."
> Jaguars are clearly in peril. Whether they recover depends on
> decisions made now, decisions that will be remembered for a long,
> long time.
>
> James William Gibson is a professor of sociology at Cal State Long
> Beach and the author of the forthcoming book, "A Reenchanted World:
> The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature."
>
>
>
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