The Debate Over Reintroducing Jaguars to North America

Taken from JRE #1914 w/Steve Rinella:

[JMW_JMW_JMW]

This country will not be whole again until Jaguars are walking down Fifth Avenue, I've been screaming this at people for years now.

[stephengallagher]

As a North-American jaguar in recovery, I just try to take one day at a time.

[mbuckholz]

I used to work at a golf course in Southern Tucson in the Sonoran desert, I have 100% seen a Jaguar early in the morning climbing the fence line. It was awesome

[thokim]

The jaguars of America went down around the same time as the California grizzly. When they industrialized the Colorado River basin, there was no continuous habitat anymore from the border to the interior of the Colorado plateau. Jaguars used to roam Zion and the Grand Canyon 100-130 years ago.

[ELcinegatto]

The habitat in Northern Mexico across the entire US southern border has largely the same climate. 150-200 years ago there were stable populations of Jaguars, Ocelots, Pumas and Bobcats from Arizona to as far east as northern Louisiana. The last Jaguar in Texas was shot in the 1940s. There's an excellent PBS documentary that recently came out about the small Ocelot population clinging on in Southern Texas in 2/3 separate populations on private ranches separated by suburbs and towns. They went down to Mexico and virtually identical habitat where the aforementioned 4 species still live side by side as they have for millions of years. As cool as Jaguars would be to reintroduce in rural, badlands or swampy areas of the border regions, the wildcats we do have like the Ocelot or West Texas Pumas should be saved from extinction. I think it's the ultimate human hubris and arrogance to think we need to "manage" wildlife in totally desolate uninhabited places. They still use horrible rusty steel paw traps in remote west Texas to "hunt" Pumas. And they often sit there for days or weeks in the trap suffering and die of exposure or predation. There was a great documentary that also came out this year called "Deep in the heart of Texas" that highlighted that. Very interesting stuff.

[ryan]

Such a small thing that I love about these podcasts is that Joe isn't afraid to ask simple questions when he doesn't know things. Where most people would nod their head to look smart, Joe says "where's the platte river" so that he fully understands the story

[stephenthomas]

Jaguars are the only feline that have webbed feet, adapted for swimming and hunting in the water. Badass cats

[achd]

I remember the story of one Jaguar that was in southern Arizona. Full grown male they'd been tracking and keeping an eye on and was believed to be the only Jaguar in Arizona at the time until one day he disappeared. Took a couple months but Mexican wildlife control/study (whatever they call themselves) eventually found him. He'd left the mountains in southern Arizona and hopped the border so he could impregnate every female jaguar he could find in Mexico. Last I'd read he still hasn't returned to the U.S.

[ericelander]

When I was a kid in the sixties, teenager in seventies, my family had a World Book Encyclopedia from 1942. Think it was my maternal grandmother's. The section on WWII was still in doubt. Anyway, I was fascinated by jaguars and still remember reading the entry about them. It stated that their range in the US was as far north as my state of Arkansas. I spent many days in the woods of our farm looking for one.

[fngcell]

Honestly reintroducing the jaguar would help a lot towards the boar problem the southern states have been having introducing a predator like that for population control could be a good thing since the boars are wiping out entire farms of crops

[LilLou]

Imagine you just casually walk to the corner store in Houston, and the second you walk out there’s a big ass Jaguar waiting for you.

[PaleAleMan]

I'm SouthernAZ and a local guy has caugh on trail cameras, a Jaguar and Ocelot, in the mountains just south of tucson.

[Spencer]

I imagine they could thrive easily in central and southern Texas due to the great influx of wild hogs in those areas. They would help to be somewhat of a population control for the hogs without any fear of them becoming desperate enough to go after livestock.

[michaelglenn]

I know there have been documented Jaguars in Texas and Arizona. One in Arizona ended up dying sadly because of the tracking collar placed on him by the DNR. It is similar to the cougar population in the Dakotas, where males end up in MN, WI, IA and IL, but they cannot establish a long term territory since no females exist in these areas.

[Josue-qbcq]

I've always thought of pumas being more specialized in living in alpine regions (except for the florida panther), and jaguars specialized in tropical/subtropical climates with lots of warm water, but it seems like these jaguars in question are able to live in arid mountainous environments as well. I would've thought jaguars would thrive in the swamps and woods along the gulf of mexico.

[amsz]

Omg the jaguar debate....you can tell how excited Joe is

[cchavezjr]

I'm from Arizona and never heard any kind of discussion as to whether it was native range or not. It was always considered as a fact.

[MattLovesVinyl]

Welp, they've tried to reintroduce Jaguars for almost 30 years in Jacksonville, FL, but after some early success it's mostly been an abysmal failure.

[charlieecho]

I was a border patrol agent in the boot heel of New Mexico and I have seen two of these cats at different times. Both instances during the day time. Both in the peloncillo mountain range in the Coronado national forest. Neither of them was very large.
I don’t think the ranchers would be ok with reintroducing these cats but honestly the entire environment on the border is being destroyed by garbage and intrusion from illegal alien smuggling anyway. I don’t think there will many ranchers left out there in the coming years.

[FredyVega]

I am using a translator so I hope it is understood, the jaguar is already in Mexico so technically it is already present in North America