Conservationists sound alarm of threat to jaguars from raging Amazon fires and deforestation

March 3 is World Wildlife Day and this year’s focus is the role of forests, forest species and ecosystems in sustaining hundreds of millions of people globally, particularly indigenous peoples and local communities

Conservationists are sounding the alarm on the plight of the jaguar as the species continues to vanish relatively unnoticed.

Population estimates for the Americas’ largest cat vary wildly, from 60,000 to 173,000. But of urgent concern is that numbers are in a steady decline due to increased threats across the 18 countries they inhabit. Numbers have dwindled by around a quarter over the last three generations with jaguars wiped out in 50 per cent of their historic range, and extinct in Uruguay and El Salvador.

“We know more about tigers and lions that are our own jaguar, our feline of the Americas, the third largest cat in the world,” Dr María José Villanueva, WWF’s Mexico conservation director and leader of the regional jaguar initiative, toldThe Independent.

“We’re losing jaguars in many areas and starting to see shrinking populations. The biggest sub-population in the Amazon has 85 per cent of jaguars in the world but with the Amazon fires and strong deforestation rates, it’s starting to become a real concern to us.”

In 2018 conservation groups and 14 countries in Latin America committed to a “2030 roadmap” to strengthen protections for jaguar habitats. The plan included creating a continuous jaguar “corridor”, winding up the continent from Argentina to Mexico, to provide the solitary big cat with the range it needs for survival. 

The roadmap also proposed strategies to reduce conflict between humans and jaguars as well as boost sustainable development, like eco-tourism, for communities which live in the same landscape.

However WWF reported last month that “minimal progress” had been made at the international level, even as indigenous communities continue to drive conservation work locally.

“I think that the role of indigenous peoples and local communities is fundamental. They are our main stewards of conservation, and they need to be acknowledged as such,” says Dr Villanueva.

Jaguars teetered on the edge of extinction in the mid-20th century. Approximately 18,000 jaguars were killed each year until 1975 when international trade was banned. Although hunting declined, jaguars still faced retaliatory attacks by people protecting livestock, and by those who feared the large cats in remote areas.

Man with skins of jaguar and ocelot for sale in the lowland rainforest of Madre de Dios, Peru. Jaguar bones, skulls and skins, are being sought as substitutes for tiger parts (WWF)

Today jaguars face interwoven threats. The creatures are deliberately killed for their parts - fangs, skulls, bones, skins, paws and meat. As protections have increased for other big cat species like tigers, wildlife trafficking rings have turned their attention to the jaguar as a substitute for traditional medicine and ornamental products, the UN reports. Poaching is once again on the rise in the Amazon, particularly in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and the Guianas.

The explosion of trade routes between Latin America and Asia in the past decade, along with the establishment of Chinese-owned mining and logging operations in the region, has played a significant role in the increased demand for wildlife products.

A 2020 report by TRAFFIC, an NGO focused on trade in wild animals, found that much of the wildlife leaving Latin America is destined for markets in China, and possibly Southeast Asia.

Jaguars are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss driven by the rampant destruction of the Amazon for agricultural expansion, logging and mining. In 2020, deforestation in the Amazon soared to a 12-year high.

Slashing and burning through the rainforest poses a twin threat to jaguars. It opens up access for trophy hunters, trafficking gangs and opportunistic poachers, while the chopping up of “forest corridors” leaves the solitary cats without the expansive areas of land they need, with males often traveling hundreds of miles to find a mate.

Trapping jaguars in isolated pockets of shrinking forest also reduces their ability to hunt, reproduce and remain genetically diverse.

In February, WWF appealed to the 14 countries who agreed to the 2030 roadmap - Argentina, Brazil, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Suriname - to do more. Conservationists also urged Guyana, French Guiana, Nicaragua and Venezuela to join the initiative.

Conservationists point to the impact that establishing a jaguar corridor will have on the climate crisis. The area encompasses over 4.8 million sq km2 of forests - an area a little larger than the EU - which capture nearly 125.9 gigatonnes of carbon emissions annually, more than three times the amount released by energy use in 2020.

WWF launched a campaign last month to bring attention to the jaguar. So far 120,000 people have signed the wildlife non-profit’s petition that will be presented to international forums in the coming months.

The conservation of jaguar habitats plays a vital role in the livelihoods and cultural continuity of indigenous communities.

Like the jaguar, indigenous peoples are also threatened by deforestation, land being converted for agriculture, unsustainable mining, forest fires and urbanization. 

Professor Iguaigdigili López, who studied biology and specializes in intercultural bilingual education, is a member of the indigenous Guna people of Panama. She is also president of the Organization of Indigenous Women on Biodiversity (OMIUBP). 

“Jaguars have a lot of significance for indigenous peoples,” she told The Independent in an email. “In the Guna culture we believe that, at the beginning of humanity, jaguars were human beings.”

In the Dulegaya language the word for jaguar, Igarobandur, means way, opens, person.

“The jaguar was the person who guided the forest path, the one who opened the way to the farms, he was the head of the forests. Through constant struggles to maintain balance, our heavenly father and mother turned him into the spirit of the jaguar, so that he would always be guarding the forests,” Professor López added.

OMIUBP holds workshops to educate young people in indigenous communities in legends of the jaguar, linking the stories to conservation. In the past year, these have become Zoom workshops due the coronavirus pandemic, which has particularly blighted indigenous communities.

“In these workshops we provide scientific information about jaguars with the support of Jaguara Panama, an organization specializing in the subject,” Professor López wrote. “We also include the wise men and women of the communities, where they speak about the spirituality of forests, animals and the worldview of indigenous peoples in relation to the conservation of species.

“We are printing stories for children that will be distributed in local schools... [which] have a teaching or moral and are about our origins and identity as peoples. The more didactic material we have, whether stories, plays or otherwise, on the relationship of animals and particularly the jaguar to humans, the more we will impact the education of children and their knowledge of the environment.”

Along with traditional practices, technology has a role to play. The Independent reported last year on indigenous communities’ deployment of drones to protect their forest homes, improving their abilities to monitor often vast and difficult terrain.

The Covid pandemic has slowed economic growth and led to greater poverty and inequality in Latin America, increasing calls for green and resilient recovery plans.

Protect the jaguar, and you safeguard so much more, say conservationists, including expanses of forests, biodiversity, watersheds, and national and cultural heritage.

“I think that the pandemic provides [a way] to understand the real impact of continuing this path of overconsumption, over-exploitation and deforestation,” Dr Villanueva says. “We're opening the wounds of our planet, and it's making us sick.”