Jaguar Watch: What 'finishing the wall' means for borderland cats
Sleek, spotted, and sinuous, the male jaguar known as El Jefe, “the boss,” roamed through the Santa Rita mountains of southeastern Arizona, captured on wildlife camera traps more than 100 times between 2011 and 2015. The last known video showed El Jefe strolling by a slow-moving stream. And then he disappeared.
Was he killed? Did he die of natural causes? Or did he just migrate away from the prying eyes of cameras? Six years after his last appearance, a camera trap in Sonora, Mexico, snapped a photo of El Jefe—120 miles south of his last location. The nonprofit Northern Jaguar Project confirmed a 100 percent match of the animal’s rosette pattern.
El Jefe’s rediscovery sent shockwaves through the conservation community. The vast distances traveled by this dispersing male jaguar emphasized the urgent need not just for binational cooperation but also for keeping borderland ecosystems open for wildlife, including jaguars, ocelots, jaguarundis, black bear, who have never known such boundaries.
“The [border] wall is going to interrupt those movements of our relatives,” says Christopher Basaldú, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas.
“Just because they’re another species doesn’t mean that they should have less of an inherent right to move across their homeland.”
This month, the second Trump administration approved its first new contract for border barriers — seven miles in Texas at a cost of $70M*. Vice President J.D. Vance said in March that the president wants to complete the entire southern border wall by 2029. President Biden paused border wall constructionfor a time, but resumed construction of limited portions in Arizona and Texas, claiming at the time it was a requirement of the original 2019 appropriation.
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/jaguar-watch-what-finishing-the-wall-means-for-borderland-cats-37111894
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