By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, May 5 2007 (IPS)

Two centuries ago, the jaguar (Panthera onca) reigned across more than half of Argentine territory. Today these predators survive in limited spaces where they are becoming easy prey for hunters.

The species, whose kingdom once extended from the south-west United States to the northern parts of Argentina’s Patagonia region, lost 80 percent of its territory in this South American country. The jaguar used to be found in 18 provinces – now only in six, according to the non-governmental Yaguareté Network.

“There are no more than 300 left in isolated and wild areas,” the Network’s Nicolás Lodeiro told Tierramérica. The north-eastern jungle of Misiones province is home to about 50 jaguars. The rest of these big cats are in the north-western jungle of Yungas, and in the arid Chaco, Argentina’s central-north region.

This is due to “the loss and degradation of their habitat, and to hunting, provoked firstly as a response to attacks against livestock, then as sport hunting, and to a lesser degree, they are killed out of fear,” Lodeiro said.

Claudio Bertonatti, of the Argentina Wildlife Foundation, said that “if we maintain the environment for them, the jaguar has a chance. But in Argentina, in 200 years the forests and jungles went from 160 million to 33 million hectares. If we continue deforesting, all the efforts at reproduction in captivity will be useless.”

The jaguar is the largest cat native to the Americas, where it is known also in Spanish as the yaguareté, tigre americano, otorongo, among other names. Of the eight sub-species identified, the one found in Argentina – Panthera onca palustris – is the largest.

Although the jaguar is relatively abundant in places like the Amazon, it is included on the “Red List” of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and also in Appendix I of the International Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), which calls for strict regulations on commerce involving the animal.

According to research in Argentina, in the early 19th century Buenos Aires exported 2,000 jaguar skins per year.

In the report “Population Status and Threats to the Conservation of the Jaguar in the Green Corridor”, which extends across Misiones, experts say that just 15 years ago there were between 440 and 1,200 jaguars in that province. Today there are 50.

Bertonatti explained that the jaguar can live in a variety of landscapes, from plains and savannahs to forests and jungles, but “we are erasing it from the map because we have fewer and fewer natural areas.”

“The remaining environments are few, and they function as small islands, and when they lose connections between them, they leave the species increasingly vulnerable,” he added. When the endangered species is an herbivore, it is not such a serious situation, but it is in the case of a large predator like the jaguar.

The jaguar feeds on other mammals and needs vast areas to hunt. “If it leaves one of those ‘habitat islands’ and comes across a dog or a horse and tries to kill it, it’s likely that the landowner will hunt and kill the jaguar,” Bertonatti said.

Lodeiro explained that the populations that survive are in areas that are of difficult access or not fit for human settlement, or where activities like logging are not possible. But there are many areas where the jaguar is left exposed to illegal hunting.

According to complaints filed with the National Wildlife Directorate and presented in federal courts, there are jaguars held in captivity that are then released onto privately held land for sport hunting. This practice is explicitly prohibited by law. On Apr. 13, a jaguar skin was seized, as well as a bracelet made from the skin, after a complaint from the Yaguareté Network.

Along with the southern right whale (Eubalaena australis), the South Andean deer or huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus) and the North Andean deer or taruca (Hippocamelus antisensis), the jaguar is one of Argentina’s four “national natural monuments”, however, it is difficult to convince a farmer not to kill it, says Lodeiro.

The solution is to consolidate the protected areas, create new ones and establish ecological corridors, control hunting, set up example-setting legal punishments to discourage killing of jaguars, and “raise awareness beginning in the schools,” says Bertonatti.

On the initiative of non-governmental organisations, the National Park Administration and the National Wildlife Directorate held two workshops on the species in 2004 and 2006. “We defined objectives, lines of action, and it was made clear that there is no time to waste,” said Lodeiro.

The participants formed regional commissions and have called for a national coordinator exclusively dedicated to look after conservation of the species, but so far there has been no response from the federal government.

“There are some advances, but without a person in charge of obtaining funds, of bringing the institutions together to work in a coordinated way, or that foment sustainable development projects, it will be very difficult to put the brakes on the loss of this species,” warned Lodeiro.

(*Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

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