Give endangered jaguars legal rights, Argentina campaigners ask court

With fewer than 20 left in the South American country’s Gran Chaco forest – the big cats could be classed as a ‘non-human person’

Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires

Fri 19 Jul 2019 19.28 BSTLast modified on Mon 22 Jul 2019 10.59 BST

Argentina’s supreme court has been asked to recognize the legal rights of the South American jaguar, of which fewer than 20 individuals remain alive in the country’s Gran Chaco region.

The largest cat in the Americas once roamed the continent as far north as the Grand Canyon, but is now in decline across the entire western hemisphere.

In Argentina, the speckled feline has been driven to the brink of extinction by the destruction of habitat to make way for soy plantations and cattle ranches.

Argentina’s National Parks Administration estimates that fewer than 250 are left alive in the country, and only 20 in the Gran Chaco region, a forest that has lost some 12m hectares (an area larger than Denmark) in the last 35 years.

On Friday, lawyers representing Greenpeace Argentina argued in the supreme court that the country should recognize the rights of the entire species.

“If the legal rights of inanimate corporations are recognized, why not the legal rights of a species of nature, which is very much alive,” said the group’s lawyer Enrique Viale.

A strong legal precedent was set in Argentina in 2016 when Argentina’s courts recognized a 29-year-old Sumatran orangutan held at the Buenos Aires zoo, named Sandra, as a “non-human person”.

Greenpeace Argentina is now seeking a similar status for the remaining jaguars in the Gran Chaco. “We now want recognition of the rights of the entire species,” Viale told the Guardian.

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Latam Eco Review: Killing jaguars for arthritis creams and wine

by Mongabay.com on 2 November 2018

The top stories last week from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, followed the fate of Suriname’s hunted jaguars, Bogota’s urban forest preserve, and Chile’s Humboldt Archipelago.

Suriname’s jaguars killed for arthritis creams and wine

Suriname’s jaguar population is being decimated for the Asian market in arthritis cream, soap, aphrodisiacs and even wine, according to an investigation by World Animal Protection. The inquiry uncovered a chain of hunting and secret trade with high evidence of animal cruelty. Local hunters sell the jaguars for around $260 to Chinese traffickers. Jaguars are increasingly being substituted for tigers, which have become rare, to meet Asian demand for wildlife parts.

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The problem of jaguars and space in western Paraguay

Researchers use GPS technology and new analytical tools to produce the first rigorous estimates of jaguar spatial needs and movements in the Gran Chaco and Pantanal ecosystems of Paraguay

Date:  March 21, 2018

Source:  De Gruyter

The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas and historically was found from southwestern USA to central Argentina. Today, jaguars are an endangered species throughout their natural habitat, and have almost been completely eliminated from the United States. The species has been lost from 50% of its original range, and outside of the Amazon it is present in only 20% of its original range. This drastic change is a result of human factors: habitat loss leading to reduced prey availability and persecution for cattle depredation.

An important component of jaguar conservation is understanding the species' spatial needs. Although there have been multiple studies of jaguar space use, there has been no such research in Paraguay up to now.

Read on  

Jaguars killed for fangs to supply growing Chinese medicine trade

Demand from Chinese workers raises demand for skin and body parts of endangered species

Robin McKie, Observer science editor

Sun 4 Mar 2018 07.00 GMT

Conservationists who have uncovered a growing illegal trade in jaguar fangs in South America are linking it to Chinese construction projects that could be threatening wildlife globally.

Experts say major Chinese power plant, road and rail works in developing nations are key stimulants of illicit trade in the skins, bones and horns of endangered animals.

Local people find out that Chinese construction workers have an interest in buying animal bones, horns and body parts for their supposed medical properties and an illicit trade is established. “Essentially, these projects act like giant vacuum cleaners of wildlife that suck everything back to China,” a conservation researcher, Vincent Nijman, of Oxford Brookes University, said last week. “It is a real worry.”

The problem in South America is of particular concern. More than 100 jaguars – a species whose numbers are dwindling – may have been killed in less than a year to supply a trade in their body parts with China. As tiger parts – which are prized by practitioners of Chinese traditional medicine – are becoming scarcer, so a market is opening up for organs from other big cats, including the jaguar.

Two examples of jaguar deaths are given in the current issue of Nature. It reports that on Boxing Day last year, the body of a jaguar was found floating in a drainage canal in Belize in central America.

Read on 

Mexico signs historic agreement to protect jaguars

The Mexican government has signed an historic agreemant with global wild cat conservation organisation, Panthera, to work towards the protection of jaguars.

A jaguar caught by a camera trap in Mexico

Senator Gabriela Cuevas, President of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Mexican Senate, led a group of senators in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Panthera’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Alan Rabinowitz.

Panthera will work with the Senate, academia, and non-governmental organisations in Mexico to raise awareness of the importance of conserving jaguars in the country and assist in the implementation of science-based conservation actions. 

The jaguar is an historic icon in Mexico, but their range throughout the country has been reduced in recent years by over 50% leaving them in danger of extinction through habitat destruction, which has led to a decline in their prey. They have also been victims of poaching. 

Read on ...

New protection for endangered jaguars in Nicaragua

The jaguar, American continent’s largest wild cat, has been awarded new protection with the recent signing of a conservation agreement between the government of Nicaragua and Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organisation.

The Nicaraguan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA), signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Panthera’s CEO, Dr Alan Rabinowitz.

Through this agreement, both parties have committed to undertake conservation initiatives to identify jaguar distribution and travel corridors in Nicaragua, allowing for the connection and protection of the species and its habitats.

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The Surprising Product Used to Attract Jaguars

When Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) wants to impress buxom newcomer Veronica Corningstone (Christina Appelgate) in the movie "Anchorman," he opts for "sex panther," a vile concoction that gets him sprayed with a fire hose. "They done studies, you know — 60 percent of the time, it works every time," Fantana says.

But while a (fake) big cat's scent fails to attract people, a (real) human scent attracts jaguars. When Miguel Ordeñana, a biologist with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, wants to lure jaguars to his camera traps, which he uses to study the big cats in Nicaragua, he uses a surprising product: Calvin Klien Obsession for Men, according to Scientific American.

Apparently the scent has civetone in it, a chemical which originally derives from the scent glands of civets, nocturnal cats native to the Asian and African tropics. One Bronx Zoo researcher tried many types of cologne, and this was the one that attracted jaguars, Scientific American reports. "What we think is that the civetone resembles some sort of territorial 

marking to the jaguar, and so it responds by rubbing its own scent on it," Ordeñana said.

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Remarkable camera trap photos of jaguars & other cats taken on Colombia ranch

Jaguars, ocelot, jaguarundi & puma all spotted - Scroll down or click here to see the images


May 2012. Reserva Natural La Aurora is nature reserve is located in Colombia 400 kms to the east of Bogota, in the department of Casanare. The 9000 hectare reserve has a tropical climate with temperatures averaging 30 degrees Celsius. Annually there is a 6 month long dry season, and a 6 month wet.

ALL THE IMAGES ARE COURTESY OF JORGE ARMANDO BARRAGAN

Mixed use - Ranching and conservation
Wildlife conservation has been conducted hand in hand with ranching here for many years, maintaining a balance of livestock and wildlife. These ranching methods were inherited from the Jesuits of the seventeenth century.

Wide variety of birds & wildlife
A wide variety of native and migrant birds of the Orinoco basin can be found here, as well as mammals such as the capybara (the world's largest rodent), and cats such as puma, jaguar, ocelot and jaguarundi. Reptiles such as iguanas and huge anacondas (5 to 7 m in length) are abundant too.

Declared as a nature reserve
As an initiative of the owners, and with the approval of the ministry of environment and regional conservation bodies, the Hato La Aurora ranch has been declared as a ‘Civil Nature Reserve' (which means that this area is an important hotspot for conservation but the government does not own it, and it can only be protected if the owner voluntarily agree to turn this property into a nature reserve).

The cameratrap pictures have helped to identify the population of cats in the reserve. As part of the conservation initiative, an eco-tourism project is now running within the nature reserve, and a new eco-lodge providing accommodation and activities on the ranch is now up and running - See more at Juan Solito Eco-lodge.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/juan-solito.html

Bolivia's Jaguars Set a Record

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2011) — In a new camera trap survey in the world's most biologically diverse landscape, researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society have identified more individual jaguars than ever before.

Using technology first adapted to identify tigers by stripe patterns, WCS conservationists have identified 19 individual jaguars by spot patterns in the rainforests of Bolivia, a record number for a single camera trap survey in the country. The animals were identified from a total of 975 photographs, a record number of images due to the use of digital cameras as opposed to camera traps that use film.
The images come from the Alto Madidi and Alto Heath, a region at the headwaters of the Madidi and Heath Rivers inside Bolivia's outstanding Madidi National Park. The survey also included Ixiamas Municipal Reserve, created following a previous WCS survey in 2004 along the Madidi River, which revealed a high abundance of jaguars and other species such as white-lipped peccaries, spider monkeys, and giant otters.

"We're excited about the prospect of using these images to find out more about this elusive cat and its ecological needs," said WCS Conservationist Dr. Robert Wallace. "The data gleaned from these images provide insights into the lives of individual jaguars and will help us generate a density estimate for the area."

The study is noteworthy in its use of digital camera traps replacing the traditional film units used in the past. The cameras are strategically placed along pathways in the forest and especially the beaches of rivers and streams for weeks at a time, snapping pictures of animals that cross an infrared beam. Now, researchers returning to the traps can download the images in seconds, rather than waiting days for film to develop. Before embarking on second field trip to the even more remote Heath River, Bolivian jaguar field biologist Guido Ayala noted that "series of digital images also capture more data than traditional film."

"The preliminary results of this new expedition underscore the importance of the Madidi landscape to jaguars and other charismatic rainforest species," said Dr. Julie Kunen, Director of WCS's Latin America and Caribbean Program. "Understanding the densities and ranging habits of jaguars is an important step in formulating effective management plans for what is arguably the most biodiverse landscape on the planet."

Madidi National Park is one of the top tourist attractions in Bolivia and is the centerpiece of a continuous chain of six national protected areas in northwestern Bolivia and southeastern Peru, one of the largest such complexes in the world.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111019171128.htm