By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Apr 1 1997 (IPS)

A government proposal that would allow hunters to kill 50 jaguars annually has outraged wild life conservationists and environmental groups who are fighting for the survival of the species.

The government plan was revealed when the ‘Pro-Fauna’ department at the Ministry of the Environment asked the International Convention on Endangered Species Commerce (CITES) to approve controlled hunting of as many as 50 jaguars per year. Until now, hunting has been permitted only when the big cats are tracked and “shot” with tranquilizer darts so that they can be moved to protected areas.

A private environmental group, Fudena, has asked CITES to reject the government’s petition to cull the jaguars and rejected suggestions their numbers had increased. Fudena alleged that Pro- fauna had based its request on the view that jaguars were threatening livestock, rather than viewing the cats as victims of ranching- related activity.

Fudena has rallied private environmental organizations and specialists in Venezuelan wildlife to condemn the proposed project.

Scientifically known as “panthera onca,” the jaguar is the most numerous member of American felines, whose habitat extends from the Colorado River canyon in the United States to the northern part of Argentina according to the book “Jaguar,” by Venezuelan zoologists Rafael Hoogesteijn and Edgardo Mondolfi.

“Jaguar” records that Americo Vespucio mentioned “panthers” in a document written in 1500. The name “jaguar” derives from tupiguarani, a language spoken from the Amazon basin through Paraguay. In this indigenous language, the jaguar’s name was “yaguara” which translates, “the wild beast which seizes prey in a single bound.”

Hoogesteijn and Mondolfi oppose the plan to kill any jaguars here as they believe that this partial legalization will encourage illegal hunting, ultimately resulting in the elimination of the jaguar from its Venezuelan range.

Pro-fauna argues that hunters can kill a jaguar only if they pay 15,000 dollars, three times the current cost involved in tranqilising and removing jaguars alive from large cattle ranches.

Pro-fauna director, Jose Luis Mendez, said that that the proposal included a three- year moratorium in order to determine more precisely the exact number of surviving jaguars. If the species is to survive, ranchers must be encouraged to participate in government plans to manage the species, he said.

Mendez also pointed out that Pro-fauna brought legal action against two ranchers who killed jaguars illegally, and that their goal is to persuade ranchers to accept the presence of jaguars provided they don’t kill livestock. When jaguars do kill livestock, then Pro- fauna is the legal means of dealing with the problem through re- location.

Pro-fauna officials highlighted independent studies that alleged that ranchers killed an average of 100 livestock-eating jaguars every year, a figure which Fudena claims is exaggerated.

The Ministry of the Environment has just issued a decree that obliges big ranchers to preserve sufficient wildlife habitat on their property so that jaguar will have an abundance of natural prey.

Pro-fauna argues that restricted use of sport-hunting has been accepted by CITES and other international organizations as an appropriate conservation technique, and that in some countries it has been the only way to preserve endangered species.

Fudena rejects Pro-fauna’s position that the jaguar represents a threat to cattle ranchers in the Plains states of Cojedes, Guarico and Apure, arguing that jaguar numbers have been declining dramatically since the arrival of the ranchers and other animals.

Fudena, along with other environmental groups such as Audubon, Provita, Terramar and Econatura, agrees with Mondolfi and Hoogesteijn that it is impossible to determine if it is the jaguar which has killed livestock, and that ranchers may make false accusations.

Mondolfi says that the government plan is full of scientific gaps and that its rationale amounts to “nonsense.” Hoogesteijn notes that Venezuela lacks the infrastructure to guarantee the numerical quotas, and that jaguars will be hunted down, further jeopardizing the survival of the species.

Pro-fauna spokesman Luis Cova pointed out that other respected scientists such as Pedro Trebau, of the Foundation for Zoos and Aquaria, are in favor of the open culling plan, and that it is essential to convince ranchers to support the jaguars and not kill them secretly or in a haphazard way, as happens now.

Cova said that the government planned to establish quotas for sport-hunting in ranching territory and not in the jaguar’s preferred habitat such as the so-called “gallery forests” typical of riverbank ecosystems.

Cova declared that organizations like Fudena see conservation as an effort to maintain natural habitat in an absolutely untouched state, “an attitude which is typical of wealthy countries and wealthy groups who are out of touch with real needs.”

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