Jaguars Don’t Live Here Anymore
EARLIER this month, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would designate “critical habitat” for the endangered jaguar in the United States and take the first steps toward mandating a jaguar recovery plan. This is a policy reversal and, on the surface, it may appear to be a victory for the conservation community and for jaguars, the largest wild cats in the Western Hemisphere.
But as someone who has studied jaguars for nearly three decades, I can tell you it is nothing less than a slap in the face to good science. What’s more, by changing the rules for animal preservation, it stands to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
The debate on what to do about jaguars started in 1997, when, at the urging of many biologists (including me), the Fish and Wildlife Service put the jaguar on the United States endangered species list, because there had been occasional sightings of the cats crossing north over the United States-Mexico border. At the same time, however, the agency ruled that it would not be “prudent” to declare that the jaguar has critical habitat — a geographic area containing features the species needs to survive — in the United States. Determining an endangered species’ critical habitat is a first step toward developing a plan for helping that species recover.
The 1997 decision not to determine critical habitat for the jaguar was the right one, because even though they cross the border from time to time, jaguars don’t occupy any territory in our country — and that probably means the environment here is no longer ideal for them.
In prehistoric times, these beautiful cats inhabited significant areas of the western United States, but in the past 100 years, there have been few, if any, resident breeding populations here. The last time a female jaguar with a cub was sighted in this country was in the early 1900s. (Jaguars — the world’s third-largest wild cats, weighing up to 250 pounds, with distinctive black rosettes on their fur — are a separate species from the smaller, tawny mountain lions, which still roam large areas of the American West.)
Two well-intentioned conservation advocacy groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife, sued the Fish and Wildlife Service to change its ruling. Thus in 2006, the agency reassessed the situation and again determined that no areas in the United States met the definition of critical habitat for the jaguar. Despite occasional sightings, mostly within 40 miles of the Mexican border, there were still no data to indicate jaguars had taken up residence inside the United States.
After this second ruling was made, an Arizona rancher, with support from the state Game and Fish Department, set infrared-camera traps to gather more data, and essentially confirmed the Fish and Wildlife Service’s findings. The cameras did capture transient jaguars, including one male jaguar, nicknamed Macho B, who roamed the Arizona borderlands for more than a decade. But Macho B, now dead, might have been the sole resident American jaguar, and his extensive travels indicated he was not having an easy time surviving in this dry, rugged region.
Despite the continued evidence, the two conservation advocacy groups continued to sue the government. Apparently, they want jaguars to repopulate the United States even if jaguars don’t want to. Last March, a federal district judge in Arizona ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit its 2006 determination on critical habitat.
The facts haven’t changed: there is still no area in the United States essential to the conservation of the jaguar. But, having asserted this twice already, the service, now under a new president, has bent to the tiresome litigation. On Jan. 12, Fish and Wildlife officials claimed to have evaluated new scientific information that had become available after the July 2006 ruling. Lo and behold, they determined that it is now prudent to designate critical habitat for the jaguar in the United States.
This means that Fish and Wildlife must now also formulate a recovery plan for the jaguar. And since jaguars have not been able to reestablish themselves naturally over the past century, the government will likely have to go to significant expense to attempt to bring them back — especially if the cats have to be reintroduced...
nytimes.com
In re Jaguars
By TigerHawk at 1/27/2010 09:03:00 AM
In case you missed it a few days back, read this very interesting Op-Ed on the matter of jaguars, and whether they should be reestablished in the United States after having been extinct here for at least 100 years. The author, who is devoted to protecting jaguars where they can thrive, thinks that it is a waste of money to try to make them thrive here. Litigious American environmentalists and their allies in the Obama administration think otherwise.
The environmental and conservation movements often seem to be driven as much by a romantic vision of a different world as by a hard-headed assessment of the possible.
tigerhawk.blogspot.com
8 Comments:
By Anonymous Anonymous, at Wed Jan 27, 10:21:00 AM:
Occasionally, I will write a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle advocating the reintroduction of Grizzly bears to Golden Gate park. For some reason, they have never published any of my letters.
tigerhawk.blogspot.com
By Blogger JPMcT, at Wed Jan 27, 05:43:00 PM:
The Democrats have been trying for years to re-introduce Jimmy Carter to the American political scene...with similar results...most of us still believe that it isn't worth it.
tigerhawk.blogspot.com |
