El Jefe, Sombra, Macho B, O:ṣhad Ñu:kudam – names for jaguars that have, in past decades, roamed the sky islands of Southern Arizona and captivated much of the region. All were lone males, and all were presumed to have ventured north from México.
Despite the prowling presence of a few male jaguars in Southern Arizona, there hasn’t been a breeding population of the cats in the United States for half a century or more.
But if environmental, rewilding and conservation organizations can convince the public and public officials to do the necessary studies and raise enough money to put together a reintroduction project — they might be able to bring more jaguars back to the U.S.-México borderlands.
They have a model to work with, too.
Sebastián Di Martino, conservation director of Rewilding Argentina, recently presented his organization’s groundbreaking work of reintroducing jaguars into the wild at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson.
A crowd of about 150 people gathered on a windy late-April evening to hear Di Martino’s tale of how he led a team in northern Argentina to buy land, create the country’s largest natural reserve, and go from zero jaguars to a breeding population of more than 35 of the big cats in just a few years.
“It’s very important that you do something here,” Di Martino said to the crowd, pushing for a similar project in northern México or Southern Arizona.
Gathered among the listeners were wildlife biologists, environmental advocates, conservationists and others from the Center for Biological Diversity, Cuenca Los Ojos, Sky Island Alliance, the Rewilding Institute, the University of Arizona, Northern Jaguar Project, and others.
Valerie Gordon, is the interim executive director of Cuenca Los Ojos, an organization based along the Sonora-Arizona border that began with a focus on water preservation and has expanded into conservation, wildlife protection, and rewilding.
Gordon told Arizona Luminaria about possible work bringing more jaguars to Southern Arizona or northern Sonora. “We don’t have plan for it right now, but we wouldn’t rule it out,” she said.
She also said that they wouldn’t start any reintroduction plan impulsively.
“We need more science and more partnerships,” Gordon said. “We’re not planning a breeding program tomorrow.”
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How jaguar rewilding worked in Argentina
It’s not just about the jaguars.
While the biggest cat in the hemisphere is a marquee species that attracts a lot of attention, and is a keystone for the health of a variety of ecosystems, many other species are, in turn, critical for the health of the jaguar.
The first step, as Di Martino explained, is acquiring territory. Rewilding Argentina needed land, and so they started by buying cattle ranches.
“The first day we opened them up to the public,” Di Martino said. That’s another less-than-obvious factor, Di Martino said, in successfully reintroducing jaguars: jobs.
“Local development and job creation is so important,” Di Martino explained. The protected land must “become a nature tourism destination” to generate enough political and community buy-in.
Argentina’s Iberá National Park, which the organization helped create, is almost 1.9 million acres, and is celebrated for its ecotourism.
The second step is bringing back the wildlife.
While protecting the land will encourage some threatened or diminished species to proliferate again, some species won’t come back on their own and must be translocated from elsewhere. Before Rewilding Argentina brought back the first jaguar, they’d already reintroduced the giant anteater, pampas deer, collared peccary, ocelots, the giant otter, and red and green macaws, among other species.
That led to a healthier ecosystem — and a robust prey-base — to support the jaguar.
Rewilding Argentina workers built a large reintroduction center, a series of giant pens in which the cats could get used to their new environment and start catching prey. They brought in animals from captivity — which they would not release as they weren’t afraid of humans — and used them as breeders.
They then moved pregnant females into the big enclosures so the cubs could grow up without human contact. They put live prey into the pens, and the cubs watched and learned as their mothers hunted.
At 3 years old, they moved the now full-grown cubs to a 76-acre enclosure with prey. Finally, after a few more months, they opened a door so the jaguars could strut into the wild.
The whole process took about four years.
Di Martino and other experts note that jaguars are extremely reclusive creatures, and typically avoid humans and human development at all costs. That’s to say, the cats won’t pose a threat to humans.
Di Martino said the project has been so successful they’ve begun capturing jaguars from Iberá National Park and placing them elsewhere in Argentina.
More jaguars in Arizona?
Megan “Turtle” Southern is the director of the U.S.-Southwest-based Rewilding Institute, and has worked with jaguars for about two decades.
Southern said that when we think about jaguars in the northern range, which extends up through most of Arizona, we need to have a big picture vision for a complete ecosystem.
“Jaguar cubs on the rim of the Grand Canyon, breeding females in the Sky Islands?” Southern said.“If the planet is dying, why not go big?”
Rewilding Argentina is inspiring because it is, Southern said, “providing a model and showing what’s possible.”
Although Arizona has abundant public land, it may be harder to piece together enough space for a jaguar, especially given the region’s cattle ranching history.
Other major challenges, as Gordon, of Cuenca Los Ojos, said, are “the wall” and “drought.”
The border wall also limits connectivity — necessary to maintain genetic diversity — between Arizonan and Sonoran jaguars.
Di Martino saw what he called “isolated islands of jaguars” on either side of the wall as a solvable problem.
“If they can’t move north and south on their own, we could move them ourselves,” he said.
While Argentina and Arizona may be distant from each other, Di Martino sees the parallels.
“We are united by this incredible cat, the jaguar. We are also united by the tragedy of losing, or almost losing, the jaguar.”
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