Sighting, ruling stir hopes for jaguar’s U.S. return

Mexico—United States

Those who wish wild jaguars would reestablish themselves north of the U.S.-Mexican border could be forgiven for feeling two glimmers of hope, the Trump administration’s border-wall plans notwithstanding. The more recent came on Oct. 25, in Albuquerque federal court. There, a judge rejected a New Mexican farming and ranching group’s petition to overturn the 2014 federal designation of critical jaguar habitat north of the border. The second occurred little more than six weeks earlier, when a conservation group released video of a wild jaguar (Panthera onca) in southern Arizona. Of the two events, the cat sighting sparked the most interest. Initially, it was reported by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) as possibly the first wild female jaguar seen in the U.S. since 1963. The group captured the image in June with a motion-activated camera in the Dos Cabezas Mountains, about 60 miles north of... [Log in to read more]

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