The return of Jaguars to the USA

23/10/2006 00:00:00 On 9 December 2001, an adult male jaguar was photographed in Arizona with a trail camera about 6.5 km north of the Mexican border. On 7 August 2003, the same jaguar was photographed again 6 km further north in the same mountain range.

During the summer of 2004 the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project expanded when the Wildlife Department at Humboldt State University joined the team. The monitoring effort increased from 13 camera stations and track/scats to more than 30, and encompassed a larger area of more remote mountains. Since its initiation in 2001, the Project has documented 49 jaguar data points in Arizona. This includes 30 photographs, 10 scat/fecal samples and 9 sets of tracks. These detections confirm the presence of two adult male jaguars and possibly a third unidentified individual in southeastern Arizona. Analysis of DNA extracted from scat samples is underway to determine gender, identity and potential relatedness to jaguars in the closest known breeding population in East-Central Sonora, Mexico. Jaguar distribution
The jaguar is the largest cat native to the New World, and is the third largest cat globally. Jaguars once ranged from southern Argentina, up along the coasts of Central America and Mexico and into the southwestern United States as far north as the Grand Canyon. In Arizona and New Mexico, these majestic cats were found in virtually every type of habitat, from desert grasslands to montane-conifer forests.

But by the 1900s, jaguars had largely disappeared from the United States, driven south of the border by development and hunting. There is still a small population in Mexico, and it is believed that most sightings in the US are of cats crossing from Mexico. However there is much work being done by the Jaguar Conservation Team to ensure that if and when these magnificent animals return to live in the US, there will be suitable habitat for them. History of the Jaguar in the United States.
Fossil records indicate jaguars in Florida 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, and there is some evidence that they were present in the Carolinas in the 18th Century. Further west, records of jaguars are more complete and the species persisted longer. In the 1840s several jaguars were shot in the vicinity of San Antonio, Texas. It may have been the introduction of the horse and its use in hunting that doomed the jaguar in North America’s grasslands. The last jaguar on the Great Plains in Texas was killed in 1910, near the Llano River in Kimble County. On the Gulf Coast of Texas the last two jaguars were killed in 1946 and 1948. They were found across the South West USA in California, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department is aware of 84 known jaguar specimens, reported kills and credible other records from 1884 to 1996. The department records 57 jaguar occurrences between 1901 and 2002.