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"Up Close And Personal"
Jaguar 12 1/2 x 14 1/2 Colored Pencil Strathmore 400 Series Juried into the 5th Annual Friends of the Columbian Park Zoo "Welcome to the Wild" art exhibition, Lafayette,Indiana Juried into the 2007 United Kingdom Colored Pencil Society 6th Annual Exhibit. |
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© 2009 All images on these pages are the copyright of Leslie Evans, All Rights Reserved and not to be used without permission of the artist. |
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Jaguar Conservation: An Overview Of Its Current Status And Efforts
by Irina Ignatova of Tropical-Rainforest-Animals.com
In the last 10 – 20 years we have seen a lot of action in the area of jaguar conservation. A number of reserves have been established, either specifically for protection of the jaguar, or for protection of the jaguar alongside other animals (as part of broader animal conservation efforts). But what is the current conservation status of the jaguars? Are they really endangered animals?
The current jaguar population is estimated to be around 15,000 individuals. The fact that this animal is classified as a Near Threatened species by the IUCN – World Conservation Union even further highlights the importance of jaguar conservation. This means that the jaguar is not endangered or vulnerable at the moment but is likely to become threatened in the near future.
We can track the beginning of a significant decline in the jaguar's numbers back to the end of the 1960s when trade in jaguar skins was rampant, driven by demand in the then fashionable jaguar fur coats. Just imagine that during that period the pelts of 15,000 jaguars were imported into the US and Europe every year. Since 1975, when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) prohibited trade in jaguars, this threat to the jaguar's existence was more or less eliminated.
Most of the current threats are similar to the ones faced by many other endangered animals. Below are the main threats that present a danger to the jaguar's long-term survival.
1. Rainforest Development
Rainforest development is probably the biggest area of concern from the jaguar conservation point of view. Virtually all the countries that are home to the jaguar are developing countries. They have to find the right balance between the need for economic progress and environmental protection. Rainforests contain invaluable natural resources and it is obviously very difficult for their owners to resist the temptation of exploiting them. So in the past several decades we have witnessed an accelerated development of rainforests. For example, we saw the construction of roads and dams which probably even further facilitated both legal and illegal logging. Vast underground resources in tropical rainforests attracted a number of large multi-national corporations – so, mining was another major development.
2. Rancher Shooting
Once the rainforests had been “opened up” by construction and logging, more migrants started moving into the forests and claiming the “free” land in search of a better life. This also contributed significantly to deforestation. As these new ranchers started settling down and breeding cattle, jaguars started attacking and killing ranchers’ livestock. This led to revenge shootings by ranchers. Rancher shooting now presents a serious risk to the jaguar’s existence, and indeed a big hurdle to jaguar conservation. We can find a good example of the rancher–jaguar conflict in the Corcovado National Park in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. As the Corcovado Foundation reports, illegal hunting of white-lipped peccaries – one of the primary food sources for the jaguar – inside the park has led to a dramatic decrease in the peccaries’ numbers. This shortage of food caused the jaguars to leave their natural habitats, move into populated areas of the park and hunt for goats and dogs. As a result, we witness jaguars being killed for attacking livestock.
3. Poaching
Poaching of jaguars had most likely existed before the large-scale development of rainforests. And though the hunting and trade in jaguars had been banned in most of their home countries, it is very likely that the opening of large forest tracts made it even easier for poachers to do their business. One of the areas driving poaching is the illegal sale of jaguars as pets to the populations of their native countries. As you can imagine, old traditions die hard and so it is tricky to persuade people to refrain from owning wild animals and not to accelerate this ongoing decline in their populations. Take, for example, some Central American countries such as Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras where the wildlife pet trade is indeed very popular. The big issue here is that owners of wild animals very often realise that they cannot manage their pets once the animals are big and, well, “wild”. And so you can often find such pet owners turning their pets in to rehabilitation units. In poorer countries the infrastructure of such units leaves much to be desired. Additionally, every unit obviously has a limited capacity and cannot keep accepting an unending stream of new customers. At the same time some experts point out that the domestic markets would not have been flooded with wild animals had it not been for the global demand for them.
4. Fighting for Territory Among Jaguars
Jaguars’ male fights between each other over territory are perhaps the only real non-human related threat faced by this animal, that can lead to injury, infection and death.
What can be done to improve jaguar conservation efforts?
As developing countries are struggling to balance their need for economic development with the need to conserve their tropical rainforests and wildlife, I would say that the change of attitude towards wild animals especially in these countries would be a good starting point. Further education of the local populations about a) the real value of wildlife and b) international conservation efforts would also help move the local mentality in the right direction. As such, people are destroying what they are destroying not for the sole fun of it but out of necessity – that is, to support themselves and their families. The root cause here is obviously the poverty itself, and its alleviation as such would certainly help relieve pressure on tropical rainforests and their wildlife. We have already seen examples of “alternative” types of employment such as research and eco-tourism jobs for the local populations.
As for concerns about rancher shootings, other really interesting and promising innovative methods have recently been put forward, for example: Payments to ranchers for “environmental services”, that is for not shooting jaguars and helping to protect them instead Trying non-lethal methods for keeping predators away from livestock, such as:
a) Guarding dogs living together with the livestock to help protect them .b) “Conditioned Taste Aversion” therapy – when a non-lethal salt is injected into a dead cow, for example, which a predator eats, gets sick and ultimately develops an aversion for this sort of prey. c) Electric shock fences that surround pastures and keep predators away.
Major Jaguar Conservation Areas
Currently, important jaguar conservation efforts are focussed on the jaguar’s most significant habitats which we already mentioned in the Jaguar Animal article. Specifically, these areas are the wetland area of Pantanal Brazil (“a critical jaguar range area”), Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary in Belize (the only reserve specially created to protect jaguars), the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala and Mexico’s Calakmul Biosphere Reserve.
