A photograph of a jaguar taken by a Fort Huachuca trail camera in the Huachuca Mountains might show a jaguar not previously seen in Arizona, state and federal wildlife officials said today.
“Preliminary indications are that the cat is a male jaguar and, potentially, an individual not previously seen in Arizona,” Benjamin Tuggle, regional director for the Southwest Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a news release. “We are working with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to determine if this sighting represents a new individual jaguar.”
Exciting news, if true. Just don't let the incompetents at AZGFD anywhere near this thing.
On a related note, I read somewhere recently that it's unlikely that a female jaguar will show up in Arizona anytime soon, as they don't travel as far as the males do. So, if we want to have a breeding population in the near future, we'll probably have to introduce females. (Can't recall where I read this--maybe a scientific paper.)
The third jaguar documented in southern Arizona since September 2012 was photographed by a Bureau of Land Management trail camera in Cochise County. The image was taken on Nov. 16, 2016, in the Dos Cabezas Mountains 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border; the camera data was only recently retrieved. This is the only jaguar photographed by this BLM-deployed camera since it was installed in August 2016.
If the "wall" gets built, you can kiss those jaguars goodbye. There won't be any more moving up from Mexico, and the population in the US is far too small (and probably all male, too, which doesn't help) to be viable.
Artist's rendering of future jaguar migration after the wall is built:
flagscott wrote:the population in the US is far too small (and probably all male, too, which doesn't help) to be viable.
How many jaguars need to be living in Arizona to constitute a viable population?
I laughed out loud when I saw this question because that is a huge can of worms. Sparing you from the messy, messy details, I'd say a ballpark of ~150 to over 1000 depending on who you ask and how you measure it. Anything much smaller, and the jaguars would be doomed to go extinct because of lack of genetic diversity (mating with your cousins turns out to be bad for humans and jaguars alike) and not enough numbers to buffer against fluctuations bad weather, disease, etc.
But if the border with Mexico stays open and jaguars keep moving into the US (iffy because jaguars in northern Mexico have problems, too), a smaller US population could probably hang on with the regular infusion of new blood and genes. FWS says that jaguars won't be fully recovered unless the US populations are well connected with Mexico so that jaguars can come and go as they please.
Anyway, this is all kind of premature because we still don't have any females here in Arizona, and they might have to be reintroduced.
flagscott wrote:I'd say a ballpark of ~150 to over 1000
flagscott wrote:jaguars in northern Mexico have problems, too
So as cool as it is that there's an occasional sighting north of the border, there's really no current plan or hope by any wildlife agency to establish a viable population of jaguars in Arizona in the next, oh, I dunno, 500 years?
chumley wrote:So as cool as it is that there's an occasional sighting north of the border, there's really no current plan or hope by any wildlife agency to establish a viable population of jaguars in Arizona in the next, oh, I dunno, 500 years?
Things could probably happen a lot more quickly with reintroductions, but the plan does not mention reintroduction at all. I'd suspect that this is more politically motivated than biologically. The welfare ranchers in southern Arizona would go nuts if FWS introduced another predator. And the Obama administration, which was in charge when the plan was written, really didn't give a feces about endangered species (not that they actively worked against endangered species, like the nitwits in charge now, but they didn't do much to help either).
flagscott wrote:If the "wall" gets built, you can kiss those jaguars goodbye. There won't be any more moving up from Mexico, and the population in the US is far too small (and probably all male, too, which doesn't help) to be viable.
Artist's rendering of future jaguar migration after the wall is built:
I really doubt a wall would stop a jaguar, they are excellent climbers.
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, ankle-twisting, HAZmaster crushing ROCKS!!
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, shin-stabbing, skin-shredding plants!
Hike Arizona it is full of striking, biting, stabbing, venomous wildlife!
nonot wrote:I really doubt a wall would stop a jaguar, they are excellent climbers.
That's wrong. Here's a quote from the USFWS recovery plan I linked to above:
Fences designed to prevent the passage of humans across the border also prevent passage of jaguars.
Have you seen the sections of border fence constructed? It's very tall metal slats. Jaguars, like housecats, use their claws to grab onto the substrate when climbing. There's nothing for a claw to grab onto on that fence. So, unless Trump decides to build a wooden fence that's not too high (not likely!), the jaguars would be cut off by any fence that covers a large portion of the AZ and NM borders.
Um, Trump already put out a request for bids on a demonstration project. He can potentially shift money already appropriated around to build the thing without Congressional approval (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/p ... .html?_r=0). So, while I'd like to share your optimism, things may look very different a year or two from now.
@flagscott
I think you and I are reading the same article differently. To me it says the guy is full of bluster and while it tells how it could possibly happen "in theory" the conclusion is clearly saying that it would be nearly impossible to do it on his own! So while I appreciate the concern, I agree with the "I'll believe it when I see it" thing. Just like closing Guantanamo!
He offered few details, including any that would address the fact that Congress, not the White House, writes the checks.
The president can announce whatever plans he wants. But ... if Congress does not go along, it can amount to wishful thinking.
(if Trump) intended to shift some already appropriated money to the wall’s construction, it was unclear where the funds would come from. He cannot easily cannibalize one program to pay for the wall...“It doesn’t work out like that,”...
So is Mr. Trump’s executive order meaningless? Not entirely. DHS can start planning and discussing the project now and ask for the bulk of the money later. And if Mr. Trump really wants to break ground immediately and avoid Congress, there is ... a workaround that would let him do so at least in theory.
Two laws... give the president some spending wiggle room...but such an accounting trick has never been used to go around Congress on such a large scale... Lawsuits would be inevitable. It would be much easier to simply ask Congress for the money.
Well, @chumley, I hope you're right, but nothing I've seen so far suggests that Trump will abide by Congress if they don't fund his wall. And with budget reconciliation, the Trump-enabling party can pass a budget with just 50 votes in the senate, so they can fund the wall without any votes from Democrats.
Not sure what the reference to closing Guantanomo is. Obama was prevented by Congress from doing that. If you're saying that Obama and Trump are likely to be equally deferential to Congress, that's funny.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is that I would not get complacent about the Wall. There are lots of ways it can still happen.
flagscott wrote: Not sure what the reference to closing Guantanomo is.
Now I'm even less sure we were reading the same article!
But as Mr. Trump’s predecessor learned in 2009 when he ordered the military prison at Guantánamo Bay closed, implementing policy is not as easy as the stroke of a pen.
flagscott wrote: Not sure what the reference to closing Guantanomo is.
Now I'm even less sure we were reading the same article!
But as Mr. Trump’s predecessor learned in 2009 when he ordered the military prison at Guantánamo Bay closed, implementing policy is not as easy as the stroke of a pen.
I don't think you understand what you're talking about with Guantanamo--Congress passed a law preventing any money from being spent to move the prisoners to the US. So, Obama's only option was to release prisoners or transfer them to another country--which he largely did, contradicting Congress' wishes in spirit, if not in letter.
The situation with the wall is different, as the article points out. Until Congress passes a law explicitly banning the building of the wall, like they did for closing Guantanamo, Trump could declare an emergency and build the will with money appropriated for other items. Then it ends up in court, and who knows what happens there--the article implies that he might have some wiggle room to do this. Like I said above, he's already started a competition to choose the best design. I think he is going to at least start building the wall--it was his #1 campaign promise, and if he fails to do it, it's going to look really bad in 2020. Whether or not Congress and the courts let him do it is tbd.
flagscott wrote:I don't think you understand what you're talking about with Guantanamo
I'm not talking about Guantanamo. I'm citing the NYT article you linked to. Gitmo is one of the situations included therein which doesn't support your opinion.
flagscott wrote:I think he is going to at least start building the wall--it was his #1 campaign promise, and if he fails to do it, it's going to look really bad in 2020. Whether or not Congress and the courts let him do it is tbd.
We probably agree on most of this. And I'm confident that congress, the courts, the public, the Mexicans, the native American tribes, or any number of other "special interests" will prevent it from actually happening.
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](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
