They call him "El Jefe." His crossing the heavily guarded U.S.-Mexico border, over his 12 years old, sparked celebrations in both countries.
"El Jefe," or "The Boss," is one of the earliest recorded jaguars along the frontier, built on walls and other infrastructure to deter drug traffickers. It is one of the few jaguars known to have crossed a partially enclosed border. An ecologist at the Borderlands Linkages Initiative, his bilateral collaboration by eight conservation groups, believes that migrants are believed to have traveled the furthest.
The rating is based on photographs taken over many years. Jaguars can be identified by their spots, which act as a kind of unique fingerprint.
The ability of the rare northern jaguar to cross borders suggests that the corridors remain open, despite the increasing obstacles, and that they remain open. Until then, he said, "it is viable [to protect] the jaguar population in the long term." Juan Carlos Bravo of the Wildlands Network, one of his group on the initiative, said:
But some worry about the Jaguar's future. While it was the government of President Donald Trumpthat strengthened and extended the border wall with Mexico, the Biden administration has placed his announced plans to fill four gaps in Sonora — His two states traversed by the Jaguar.
Conservationists don't know how many jaguars live in the Sierra Madre Occidental, but 176 have been identified over 20 years by the Northern Jaguar Project (another group in the initiative). Of these, "El Jefe" is known to have crossed the border, Bravo said. , only the skin was found.
The first photo of "El Jefe" was taken in 2011 by a hunter southeast of Tucson, Arizona, Bravo said. Jaguar became famous in Arizona and the local school named him "El Jefe." Motion-sensor cameras installed in the transit area captured Arizona's Jaguar in 2012 and again in his 2015.
Conservationists were stunned when another member of the coalition, Profauna, confirmed a photograph taken in the heart of the jaguar last November. Sonora was "El Jefe". The discovery not only meant that jaguars could still cross the border, but that other jaguars they went missing may still be alive, the initiative said in a statement.
Captured in the southwestern United States for bounties offered by the government to promote cattle grazing, it was thought to have disappeared from the United States by the end of the 20th century. Jaguar populations are now concentrated along the Pacific coast of Mexico, southeastern Mexico, Central America, and central South America.
A jaguar sighting in the United States in 1996 prompted an investigation to find a reproductive point in the heart of Sonora.
NGOs band together to work on both sides of the border to track cats, create sanctuaries, understand where cats have migrated, and provide landowners in the United States and Mexico with cats for protection. Bravo said he asked for help to
In addition to the difficulty of deciding where to place cameras to record animals and the subsequent difficulty of analyzing the images, conservationists in Mexico face another problem. It's a drug cartel.
"There is a presence of armed groups and drug traffickers" passing through the same isolated area as the Jaguar, Bravo said in a call from Sonora. It's important to work with people in the community who can tell you...all of this is very complicated." Borders are a major challenge for , Bravo said, with the wall preventing the movement of not only jaguars, but also American antelopes, black bears and Mexican wolves. Light towers and roads used by border guards are also a problem, he added.
