The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson has released the first video of the only known jaguar in the United States.
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“El Jefe” Spanish for “the boss” has been living in the Santa Rita Mountains about 25 miles south of downtown Tucson for over three years, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
The video footage shed light on El Jefe’s grooming behavior and gave researchers a sense of his preferred corridors, he said.
The conservation centers say a proposed copper mine by a Canadian company in the middle of the Santa Rita Mountains threatens to cleave thousands of acres from the jaguar’s natural territory.
The Centre for Biological Diversity hopes El Jefe will soon be joined by more jaguars that wander up from Mexico. Captured on remote sensor cameras in the Santa Rita Mountains just outside of Tucson, the dramatic footage provides a glimpse of the secretive life of one of nature’s most majestic and charismatic creatures.
The video shows about 40 seconds of El Jefe, the jaguar that’s been seen in still images.
Jaguars are the third largest cats in the world, after tigers and lions. Conservation CATalyst has about a dozen cameras in the areas where El Jefe lives and plans to add more, Serraglio said.
“Studying these elusive cats anywhere is extremely hard, but following the only known individual in the U.S.is especially challenging”, biologist Chris Bugbee said in a press-release. He’s the only documented wild jaguar in the country.
“We will continue to work with the federal agencies to establish appropriate conservation and mitigation measures for the jaguar and other plants and animals”, Merrin said in a statement.
El Jefe and his male predecessors seem to have dispersed from the closest breeding population which is located in Sonora, Mexico, more than 125 miles (200 kilometers) to the south.
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They have disappeared from their USA range over the past 150 years, primarily due to habitat loss. The last wild female jaguar was shot by a hunter in 1963 in Arizona’s Mogollon Rim. The Center for Biological Diversity and Conservation CATalyst, a former program within the UA, have been collaborating in a video project to monitor the endangered jaguar and ocelot in the southeastern Arizona mountain range.
