In 1978, renowned ecologist Dan Janzen jumped into a ravine in Costa Rica, broke three ribs, and spent the first month of the rainy season watching the tropical dry forest from inside a shack. At night, a simple 25-watt bulb drew in so many moths that they plastered the walls like a live wallpaper. The […]
Tag: Panthera onca
Endangered shark trophies dominate the online wildlife trade, study finds
The wildlife trade, both legal and illegal, depletes biodiversity, with research indicating it results in a staggering two-thirds decline in the populations of some traded species. Which is why, when a filmmaker friend asked environmental science professor Jennifer Jacquet if she could “do something” about the widespread wildlife trade, especially the online sale of wildlife […]
Ecological crisis in Brazil’s Pantanal fuels human-jaguar conflict
Roberto Carlos Conceição Arruda recalls the moment in 2002 when an ordinary morning routine took a harrowing turn. It was around 8 a.m., in the remote mountainous region of Serra do Amolar in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state, and Arruda, better known as Beto, then 29 years old, had left his house to fetch […]
Report links meat giant JBS to massive destruction of jaguar habitat
Agricultural expansion in two Brazilian states has cleared a U.K -sized area of jaguar habitat, nearly a fifth of which occurred in the last decade alone, a new report shows. About 27 million hectares (67 million acres) of wild jaguar habitat have been lost as of 2023 in the Amazonian states of Pará and Mato […]
Jaguar tracks still stained with blood in Bolivia
On one Saturday in August 2023, news of a jaguar (Panthera onca) death shook the small streets of the Amazonian town of Ixiamas in Bolivia. It was all community members were talking about, after having found the animal’s carcass on the side of a dirt road leading to the community of Santa Fe. The jaguar’s […]
Indigenous guardians embark on a sacred pact to protect the lowland tapir in Colombia
In the forest’s fecund gloom, José Muchavisoy leads the guardians of the territory as they scan the undergrowth for trails left by their target. Strangely splayed paw prints, dung among the leaf litter and mud wallows where the creature cooled off during the hottest hours of the day are hints it was recently here. If […]