Another jaguar (Panthera onca) has been spotted in Arizona, making 8 identified in recent years. The new Arizona jaguar is something of a mystery, however, as it may be a member of a different, as yet unnamed subspecies.
According to Animals Around The Globe the large cat was filmed in the Huachuca Mountains in the vicinity of Tucson. It is pretty clear that jaguars are entering Arizona. However, they have all been males. Until females appear and begin to breed it cannot be said there is a population in the state. The website appears confident the new Arizona jaguar is indeed a member of a new subspecies.
Conservationists are working to reintroduce cats to the southern United States and have begun the formal petition process to encourage the federal govenment to act.
Jaguars are the largest of the cats to inhabit the American continent. They are the third largest in the world. Currently the most generous estimate of their numbers is about 175,000 mostly from Mexico south into the Amazon basin. The cats are facing serious pressure from human development and their habitat is fragmenting.
But a number of efforts are being made to rescue the cats and expand their range. One method is to take a leaf from the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Overcrossing. That involves building and maintaining wildlife corridors to allow for genetic diversity and preventing inbreeding. The other is “re-wilding.” Re-wilding can be as simple as re-introducing animals into habitat from which they were driven. Or rewilding can be a more complicated process. Animals not born in the wild can be re-habituated to normal behaviors prior to release in the wild.
If the spotting of the new Arizona jaguar is followed by the arrival or one or more females the more natural process of reproduction may re-introduce the jaguar to Arizona.
Worth noting is the fact that jaguars have one of the most powerful bites in the animal kingdom. Measured at 1500 pounds per square inch a jaguar bite is about twice as powerful as that of the most powerful dog. This helps explains why jaguars are able to kill and eat very large snakes and crocodilians. They can bite through a turtle shell.