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1,470 Jaguars Killed or Displaced by Fires and Deforestation Since 2016

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Story at a glance…

  • These 1,500 jaguars have been killed or displaced, amounts to 2% of the global population.

  • Jaguars can’t survive in many kinds of degraded landscape, and so the 1,500 number is a conservative one.

  • Panthera, a big cat conservation group, says many things can be done to save jaguars, but without forest protection, nothing else matters.

While the jaguar is one of the world’s most successful and adaptable big cats, 2% of the global population is estimated to have been killed or displaced by deforestation and fires in the Amazon Rainforest since 2016.

The result of careful monitoring by Panthera, a global wildcat conservation organization, the study warns that 1,470 is a conservative estimate and that some of the knock-on effects of deforestation are not accounted for, but which could just as easily result in jaguar death.

An average of 300 of the spotted predators lose their lives every year to fires, deforestation, and conflict with humans, and despite a robust population, it’s a state of affairs that cannot continue for long. Panthera estimates jaguar numbers could fall faster in the coming years as habitat fragmentation reduces genetic diversity and isolates cats in areas that may not contain the resources they need to survive.

Furthermore, secondary-growth forest, a scientific term for the gnarly impassible overgrowth that crops up in the wake of a fire, is ignored completely by jaguars. If forests aren’t restored to a more first-growth state, characterized by tall trees and limited undergrowth, jaguar populations will continue to fragment.

“It’s important to remember that the results of our study represent just a small sub-sample of the actual number of jaguars affected by fires and deforestation across the species’ entire 6 million kilometer range, which extends from Mexico to Argentina,” says Panthera Conservation Scientist and study co-author Fernando Tortato, via email.

“As deforestation continues to increase, jaguar populations will gradually become more vulnerable. Therefore, we must act now so that the jaguars of the Amazon do not follow the same path as jaguar populations in other more threatened biomes, such as the Atlantic Forest”.

Panthera has led successful conservation work for the jaguar through their Jaguar Corridor Initiative, an effort to ensure a genetic pathway for jaguars in Argentina, to freely, if they should choose to do so, walk all the way to Mexico.

PICTURED: Panthera scientist and study co-author Fernando Tortato attempting to stop a fire from engulfing an area of grass in the Brazilian Pantanal. PC: Fernando Tortato/Panthera. Released.

Coordinated arson

A tragedy of the commons in every sense, the vast bulk of the Amazon is treated in some sense like the seemingly-endless shoals of cod once upon a time in the mid-Atlantic; an unending resource that’s considered too great to privatize, and spans too much ground to effectively police.

Panthera used satellite data to track deforestation, which is the principal method of most groups that monitor, or attempt to monitor, the Amazon.

Home to 420 recognized indigenous groups, who have limited authority to punish those who harm the lands in which they live, very little fear resides in the hearts and minds of loggers, miners, farmers, and ranchers, who slash and burn what they like.

This was perfectly captured in the August 2019, “Novo Progresso Fires” when members of these industries used social media to coordinate an unprecedented act of cooperative arson when they set 124 fires in the Amazon in a single day.

Jaguars, which have a keystone and umbrella species effect on the forest, facilitating the protection of lesser-valued creatures due to their need for wide tracks of high-quality forest, are directly impacted by fires and deforestation. To understand just how much they are affected, Panthera used population surveys to estimate populations in the acreage of forests lost to fires, farming, and logging between 2016-2019, a method which produced the nearly 1,500 figure.

the authors note it’s a conservative estimate as many of the jaguars that were displaced stand little chance of surviving to continue their genetics or support their species in any way.

“Jaguars that suffer displacement by deforestation and fires tend to stay close to the affected areas,” Tortato tells WaL. “In these new, more fragmented environments, jaguars become more vulnerable to other threats. Human-jaguar conflict is a serious threat for displaced jaguars, as they often feed on easy prey like livestock that is not properly protected when in unfamiliar territory.”

“The point is that even if jaguars are able to survive fires and deforestation, they are, in the end, often doomed,” he said.

PICTURED: A fire in the Brazilian Pantanal wetlands, in August of 2020. PC: Fernando Tortato/Panthera. Released.

Stem the bleeding

Better protection for the forests which jaguars call home is a must, and establishing more protected areas, particularly in order to unite patches of fragmented habitat, has been shown to directly improve jaguar populations.

“Real-time monitoring could potentially highlight that the advance of deforestation is isolating two important protected areas in a certain region and thus fragmenting the jaguar population,” says Tortato. “Using this information, Panthera could propose a rapid response in which the government would guarantee a corridor ensuring the genetic flow of jaguars between the two isolated protected areas”.

Furthermore, improvements in cattle and farm production, and investments in plant and equipment in the farming sector to improve yields, are also recommended. As shown in the U.S. farming sector over previous decades, improvements in grazing pasture management by the planting of legumes and livestock rotation removes the pressure on farmers to increase acreage or herd size.

However, without enforcement of forest protections, the effect of these secondary and tertiary measures was found in the study to essentially fall to nothing.

“Currently, most states in Brazil lack a unified database of permits for deforestation, along with statistics of anti-deforestation measures,” the authors write. “Thus, it is currently impossible to analyze the efficiency of current policies, or even to compare them across states”.

“Jaguars can be conserved through a wide range of strategies and mechanisms, from government-designated protected areas to economic measures, such as promoting wildlife friendly beef certification,” they conclude. “We hope the somber estimation that around 300 jaguars are lost yearly will push the implementation of potential conservation measures forward”. WaL

 

PICTURED ABOVE: The Brazilian Panthera team tries to put out a fire on some wooden bridges in the Pantanal wetlands. PC: Fernando Tortato/Panthera. Released.

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About Post Author

Andy Corbley

Corbley@worldatlarge.news
https://www.worldatlarge.news
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