I was quite thrilled reading Jut Wynne’s commentary on the Maya Forest Corridor (MFC) published by Mongabay on May 24th of this year. Jut described the critical importance of the MFC being the missing link connecting the Belize Maya Forest to the Maya Mountain Massif. Being an ecologist and environmentalist, I find any news of […]
Tag: jaguars
Finding fangs: new film exposes illicit trade killing off Bolivia’s iconic jaguar
Elizabeth Unger was a 25-year-old biology graduate working as a PhD research assistant for big cat and climate projects in Latin America when she heard about the Bolivian authorities intercepting dozens of packages containing jaguar fangs sent by Chinese citizens to addresses in China. “I was really blown away as [the story] was completely under […]
In Colombia, a successful jaguar conservation program has a whiff of coffee
Fires had a devastating effect in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in Colombia’s Caribbean region, between 2012 and 2013. In 2013 alone, the region lost an estimated that 22,000 hectares (54,400 acres) of forest, mainly due to fires, according to CORPAMAG, the environmental authority for the department of Magdalena. At almost the same time, […]
Electronic ears listen to poachers in a key Central American jaguar habitat
A gunshot explodes through the rainforest, followed by what sounds like branches falling from a tree. A dog barks. “Tito, did I hit it?” a man asks his companion in Spanish. “Oh yes, I did hit it. Look, there is blood dripping. I shot it from over there.” These sounds were recorded on an […]
Jaguars in Suriname’s protected parks remain vulnerable to poaching
In mid-June 2012, a few months after she started monitoring the jaguars inside Brownsberg Nature Park in Suriname, biologist Vanessa Kadosoe saw Amalia for the first time. Through the pictures from a camera trap, she observed the little jaguar cub walking beside her parents, Máxima and Willem Alexander, the monarchs of the jungle until then. […]
Cat corridors between protected areas is key to survival of Cerrado’s jaguars
With no natural predators to worry about, jaguars (Panthera onca) roam the forests of South and Central America. This feline is found in 18 countries, but only 4% of its critical habitat is effectively protected. The lack of protection has allowed its habitat to be destroyed and fragmented, the main reason why this emblematic species […]
Trump’s border wall construction threatens survival of jaguars in the US
By the 1960s, the North American jaguar had vanished from the southern US borderland after being hunted to extinction. Yet in the mid-1990s, there was a remarkable discovery: the jaguar had reappeared in the Sky Islands of Arizona, a region of rugged linked mountain ranges spanning the US and Mexico border that boasts the highest […]
Video: Vets hail ‘victory’ as jaguar burned in Pantanal fires returns to wild
Ousado the jaguar could hardly walk. Fires had blown through his territory in the Pantanal region of Brazil, scorching the very ground the animal was running upon as he tried to escape. When a team of volunteer veterinarians eventually captured him in Encontro das Águas State Park, all four of his paws had turned beet […]