JAGUAR HABITAT IN THE U.S.

Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 5:57 PM

Subject: Jaguar Habitat in the U.S.

Here are a couple of articles and a little historical information that might be of interest to those that are following the lawsuits the Center for Biological Diversity has been filing in regards to jaguar habitat in the U.S. 

Of particular interest, to me, is a quote from Kieran Suckling, Center for Biological Diversity, that I found on a blog site from New York-“We wanted to set up refuges over here and create breeding populations that might save the species, but the government has said ‘no way’“.

Having worked with Michael Robinson, CBD, on the Jaguar Conservation Team over the last few years, I was pretty sure this is what the Center was aiming at but had never seen them put into words before.  When I read the blog, I remembered how Michael had supported Tony Provolitis when Tony introduced the concept of a captive breeding program and reintroduction effort in the Sierra Institute’s proposal entitled, “Jaguar Habitat in Southern Arizona and New Mexico”, in 2000.  This report and its highly questionable recommendations were “adopted” by the Jaguar Conservation Team shortly after its presentation to the Jaguar Habitat Subcommittee.

The Scientific Advisory Group (JAGSAG), however, questioned the wisdom of a captive breeding program and reintroduction program when asked to review the Sierra Institute’s recommendations.  The scientists’ felt jaguars should not be reintroduced into the Southwestern United States based on a host of reasons, including:

* Reintroduction would be expensive and inferior to studying the existing populations in Sonora, Mexico.

* Homing behavior suggested translocation of jaguars would cause the animal to return to their original home ranges. Siting a report on lions, where 9 out of 14 translocated animals died returning to their home range (Ruth et al. 1998), the scientists felt this rate of loss would be unacceptable for jaguars.

* The jaguar situation should be stabilized in Latin America first.

* In addition, capturing and moving animals would only further deplete the existing jaguar population.

Regarding a captive breeding program the scientists made the following comments:

* Such a program would be expensive in time, space and money.

* Captive breeding tends to erode genetics and learned behavior traits.

* Captive bred animals raised in contact with humans are more likely to engage in human and livestock encounters than wild-caught animals (Beldon and McCown, 1996). If such traits were passed from mother jaguar to young, it would not produce a climate sensitive to jaguar conservation.

* The released captive born jaguars would not likely live long enough to produce data on habitat use, and/or the data might not reflect the actual needs of wild jaguars.

Keep in mind as you read the following articles that Michael wrote most of the “science” that is now quoted by the media regarding jaguars habitat in the U.S.  He conveniently forgets the JAGSAG’s review of the Sierra Institute’s report also sites another report (Turner 1997) that suggested jaguars were driven from the Southwestern portion of their former range with the arrival of the lion, not the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services.  The JAGSAG also speculated that lions might have ”better adapted to the northern environment” because they ”had an advantage in the neotropical forests of Central and South America because of its body size and limb length” indicating that “these same attributes might have become a hindrance when competing with the lions in North America.”

Michael’s claims that jaguars have been extensively documented in New Mexico are also greatly exaggerated.  According to the Jaguar Reports and Records from New Mexico, January 15, 1998, only 21 jaguars have been reported in New Mexico.  These “sightings” took place over a 500 year period from 1540 to 1996 and were not ranked because most did not have any physical evidence to substantiate a credible “sighting” report.

According to Adele L. Girmendonk’s report, Arizona Game and Fish Department, April 1994, “Ocelot, Jaguar and Jaguarondi Sighting Reports: Arizona and Sonora, Mexico”, “There were 82 jaguar reports collected from 1848 to March 1994 in Arizona and one from Sonora.  Only 26 reports were evaluated as credible accounts, of which 17 were confirmed (this includes the three jaguars killed in southern Arizona that were possibly captured in Sonora then released in Arizona).”

As you can see, the Center for Biological Diversity’s “science” is highly inflated and exaggerated.  In addition, the Center fails to consider Alan Rabinowitz, world renown jaguar researcher’s statement: “The fact that southwestern United States is the northern limit of the modern jaguar’s range is not by chance.  The more open, dry habitats of the southwest are marginal for the jaguar in terms of water, cover and prey density”.  Obviously the media does not question the Center’s claims that jaguar habitat exists in the U.S, that will be up to the Jaguar Conservation Team members. 

Contrary to what the Center claims, U.S. Fish and Wildlife did state in their determination that they intended to continue their support of jaguar conservation throughout the jaguars’ range in South and Central America, as well as Mexico.  They also intend to work with the Jaguar Conservation Team in their efforts to protect any jaguars that might wander into the U.S. from Mexico.  This hardly constitutes an “abandonment” of jaguar conservation efforts, as the Center likes to accuse the Bush administration of doing.

The Center for Biological Diversity’s claims should give us all pause as we ponder the intent of their lawsuit.  Is it really based on sound science and what do they intend to achieve with these persistent lawsuits? 

Remember, the Jaguar Conservation Team will be meeting in Lordsburg at the Baxter Community Center on March 13th at 10:00 a.m.  Please BE THERE!!

Judy

The World is Run by Those Who Show Up!

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—– Original Message —–

Subject: Bush Administration Refuses to Protect the Last American Jaguars, Driving Conservation Group to Court

Commondreams.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 29, 2008 1:15 PM CONTACT: Center for Biological Diversity Michael Robinson, (575) 534-0360   Bush Administration Refuses to Protect the Last American Jaguars, Driving Conservation Group to Court   SILVER CITY, NEW MEXICO – February 29 – The Center for Biological Diversity issued a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today over the agency’s decision not to recover an endangered species native to the United States, the jaguar, in violation of the Endangered Species Act. The notice is required to allow the federal agency one last chance to comply with the law.“Jaguars evolved in North America, and their recovery in our country is part of recovering our damaged ecosystems,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “They are beautiful animals that help keep the balance of nature, and preventing their extinction involves helping them reclaim the homelands from which our government exterminated them.” On January 7, 2008, in response to an active Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit seeking a recovery plan and critical habitat for the jaguar, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director H. Dale Hall signed a “determination” that developing a recovery plan for the jaguar — as required by the Endangered Species Act — would not promote the conservation of the species. This decision effectively mooted a recovery-plan claim in an ongoing, two-part suit by the Center based on the fact that the government has unreasonably delayed recovery planning and protection of critical habitat. The “unreasonable delay” claim will shortly be replaced by a new lawsuit that specifically takes issue with the Bush administration’s decision not just to delay a recovery plan but to abandon its responsibility to recover the majestic, shy cat. The government’s January decision awkwardly and inappropriately attempts to fit a narrow loophole in regulations under the Endangered Species Act that permit the agency not to develop a recovery plan for species whose “historic and current ranges occur entirely under the jurisdiction of other countries” (emphasis added). Jaguars’ historic range in the United States has been extensively documented in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Jaguar sightings and physical remains have also been reported in Colorado, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. In addition, American Indian artifacts depicting jaguars have been found in Alabama and Missouri. The jaguar’s current range comprises a small portion of southern Arizona and New Mexico. In June 2007, more than 500 members of the American Society of Mammalogists met in Albuquerque and unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a recovery plan for the jaguar. The resolution concluded that “Habitats for the jaguar in the United States, including Arizona and New Mexico, are vital to the long-term resilience and survival of the species, especially in response to ongoing climate change.” The Bush administration decision also claims that “actions taken within the United States are likely to benefit a small number of individual jaguars peripheral to the species, with little potential to affect recovery of the species as a whole” and that conservation plans outside the United States are adequate to recover the species. “If this same logic had applied historically, there never would have been a recovery plan bringing gray wolves back to Yellowstone or the Gila wilderness,” said Robinson. The rationale is also contradicted by the decision’s own admission that conservation plans outside the United States “have thus far fallen short in stemming the decline of the jaguar.” Directly undermining its own assertion that a recovery plan cannot facilitate conservation of an international species is the fact that the Fish and Wildlife Service issued an international recovery plan for the whooping crane in March 2007. Robinson added: “If the United States can work across borders to develop an international recovery plan for the whooping crane, why can’t it do so for the jaguar? Could it be because the Bush administration is dead set on walling off the U.S.-Mexico border.” Circumventing controversy over the ongoing construction, without environmental review, of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border — including an area where a jaguar has been confirmed living in the United States for over 10 years now — may also be behind the decision not to recover the species. Jaguar recolonization of the United States from Mexico will be short-circuited by the wall. Background Through most of the twentieth century, the federal government poisoned, trapped, and pursued with hunting hounds jaguars in the United States, implementing a policy that all should be killed. The Fish and Wildlife Service killed the last female jaguar confirmed in the United States in 1963, in the Apache National Forest of Arizona. After the jaguar was listed as an endangered species outside the country under authority of the 1969 precursor to the current Endangered Species Act, due to unregulated hunting of thousands of jaguars every year, the Fish and Wildlife Service began issuing “hardship permits” to safari companies to allow their American clients to import jaguar pelts into the United States. On July 25, 1979, the Fish and Wildlife Service published a Federal Register rule stating that through an “oversight” the jaguar was not listed as an endangered species in the United States when the list of foreign endangered species authorized under the precursor Act was used as a template in creation of the list authorized in the current Act. The agency pledged to “take action as quickly as possible” to list the jaguar domestically, but failed to follow through until the Center for Biological Diversity sued the agency in 1996 to compel action. As a result, the jaguar became an officially endangered species in the United States in July 1997. But the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to develop a recovery plan or designate critical habitat for the jaguar. In June 1999, the Service authorized its sister agency, the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, to “take” (ie. kill or injure) a jaguar as long as the taking occurred inadvertently in the course of trying to kill other species of wildlife.

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http://newyorkbrits.blogspot.com/2008/01/want-jaguar-not-in-this-usa.html

New York Brit – Blog

Views from Bay Ridge Brooklyn

The US government has just vetoed a plan to save the species, Panthera onca, one of the world’s most endangered, and beautiful, large cats – and the Bush regime is totally to blame.

‘The US is building a wall along the border to keep out immigrants. But that would stop jaguars crossing the border and entering the US. We wanted to set up refuges over here and create breeding populations that might save the species, but the government has said “no way”. It doesn’t want anything interfering with that wall,’ said Kieran Suckling, of the US Centre for Biological Diversity.

Jaguars were once common across the southern United States – as well as in Central and South America – but were wiped out in the US in the sixties. The last animal was shot in 1963.

The Bush regime makes me sick.

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SPERO NEWS

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=14185&t=USA-Mexico+border+wall+means+end+for+jaguars

USA-Mexico border wall means end for jaguars

Experts in mammal biology say that a way being erected between Mexico and the US to deter illegal immigration will have a negative effect on Panthera onca – jaguar – that roams the southern US and northern Mexico.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

By Tierramerica   

In announcing that they are giving up efforts to help the jaguar population recover, U.S. authorities have handed a death sentence to the big cat that was once plentiful along the border with Mexico.

TORONTO, Jan 28 (Tierramérica).- Jaguars have no place in the United States, although a handful still roam the Southwest. Environmentalists suspect the real reason U.S. officials will let the jaguar become extinct is the “security” wall being built along the Mexican border.

Ecologists have long warned that the border wall — actually a series of walls — will have big impacts on wildlife and the region’s fragile and unique ecology.

“There is no question that jaguars (Panthera onca) in the U.S. and northern Mexico would be significantly affected by the wall,” says Joe Cook, expert in mammal biology at the University of New Mexico.

“As best we can tell, the few remaining U.S. jaguars are part of a larger population based in Northern Mexico,” Cook told Tierramérica.

The wall would stop the movement of jaguars north and south, greatly diminishing the genetic diversity of the animals trapped on either side. That loss of diversity could increase their susceptibility to disease and vulnerability to other environmental changes, he said.

“The only hope to preserve large carnivores in the wild is to have large areas of continuous, unfragmented habitat.”

Jaguars have roamed the southern United States, from Louisiana to California, for thousands of years. Extensive predator control efforts in the late 1800s and much of the last century decimated their numbers until very few remained.

Now a highly endangered species, U.S. endangered species laws require that the Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) develop a plan to help the jaguars’ recover.

That has never happened and environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, have filed lawsuits to have one created.

However, last week the USFWS announced it is abandoning all jaguar recovery efforts, stating that the United States represents only a small part of the animal’s range.

Not only is that a poor justification scientifically, it also sets a precedent for smaller, poorer nations to argue that since they are only a small part of the jaguars range, or the range of any other animal, they should not have to protect endangered species, says Cook.

“The (George W.) Bush administration has been horrific with respect to the conservation of America’s natural resources,” he adds.

“The New World’s largest cat is going extinct throughout North and South America, but rather than develop a plan to save it, the Bush administration is building a wall to forever keep it out of the U.S,” said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

If there was a jaguar recovery plan it might slow or even force the relocation of large projects, like new mines, roads or building an enormously long wall across the border.

This “was a short-sighted effort to keep Mexican nationals out of the U.S. with a militaristic wall that extends to Mexico’s animals as well,” Suckling told Tierramérica.

The 3,141-kilometer Mexican-U.S. border crosses a biologically diverse region of desert, mangrove forests, plains, mountains, river valleys, wetlands, cities and towns. The border region is home for many rare and endangered species.

And now a series of walls and barriers, along with roads, lights, power facilities, are being built along large portions of it without any environmental assessment, according to Laura López-Hoffman, an ecologist at the University of Arizona.

López-Hoffman, also linked to the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), is part of a group of scientists on both sides of the border who are trying to conduct a scientific assessment of the ecological impacts of the wall. But the wall is going up faster than they can scramble to collect data.

“The best we can do in the next year is create hypothetical models of the potential impacts. Collecting data on the actual responses of species will take another 10 years and it will be too late,” she said.

There is no doubt the wall will have profound ecological effects, most obviously preventing the movement of many species, such as the jaguars.

Areas will be destroyed during the construction of the wall and new roads. Transboundary species like birds and bats will be affected by any lighting along the wall.

Mexico is considering filing a complaint against the United States in the International Court of Justice for the environmental damage caused by the wall. By building the wall, the U.S. is violating international treaties, according to Gerardo Ceballos, of UNAM’s Institute of Ecology.

Even before the wall project, the Border Service has done a lot of damage, including the burning of wide areas to improve visibility, fencing off wildlife trails, and filling in valleys, canyons and estuaries, she said.

In Mexico, ecologists also see the wall as a barrier to collaboration on cross-border environmental issues, says López-Hoffman.

She stresses that it will be more difficult for U.S. and Mexican scientists to work together on water issues and the impacts of climate change, which are expected to hit the region particularly hard.Reported for Tierra America by Stephen Leahy.

Tierramérica is a specialized information service on environment and development, produced by the international news agency, IPS (Inter Press Service) and sponsored by the UN.

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