Mexico’s jaguar population has grown by some 10% during the period 2018-24, according to the country’s latest nationwide jaguar census. The count, the third conducted since 2010 by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and 30 partner institutions, indicates a continuing rebound of the jaguar (Panthera onca). The census gathered information across almost half a million hectares in 16 states, concluding the population rose to 5,326 in 2024 from the 4,800 reported in 2018, the year of the second census. The first national census, released in 2010, pegged Mexico’s jaguar population at 4,000. “[T]his is excellent news because it indicates that even during such a complex time for the environment, when Mexico is losing hundreds of thousands of hectares of habitat each year, if we pool together efforts and actions, we can still achieve positive results,” says Gerardo Ceballos, president of the nonprofit National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation...
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A female jaguar raised in captivity and released into the Argentine Chaco recently as part of a wildlife-reintroduction project has likely been killed by hunters, project personnel say. The body of the jaguar, known as Acaí, has not been found, but the wildlife-restoration group that released her says her electronic-monitoring collar stopped registering movement on Oct. 25—just 20 days after she was set free in the Chaco. The monitor’s signals since then have come from a fixed location in the waters of the Bermejo River—indicating, the group says, that the cat was killed and her collar thrown into the river. The organization, the Rewilding Argentina Foundation, has worked to restore native species in various parts of Argentina. Among these regions is the southern Argentine portion of the Gran Chaco, an enormous, semi-arid lowland of dry forests and savannas that reaches into Paraguay, Bolivia and...
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As Mexico and the United States last month jousted over the timing of water deliveries Mexico owes Texas, officials from both countries quietly signed a binational agreement to improve river-water quality in the Tijuana-San Diego borderlands. Diplomatic tension over the water deliveries to Texas attracted a far greater share of press attention (see related story—this issue). But experts say the river-cleanup accord for the Tijuana-San Diego area, called Minute 333, could help bring about long-overdue water-quality improvement in that region. The Dec. 15 agreement, an amendment to the two countries’ 1944 Water Treaty, aims to reduce the amount of untreated sewage and trash that the Tijuana River carries north across the border from Mexico into San Diego County, California. Pollution discharged by the Tijuana River where it empties into the Pacific Ocean is blamed for causing extensive marine and beach contamination along coastal...
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