JAGUAR by Alan Rabinowitz (Anchor: $12,...

JAGUAR by Alan Rabinowitz (Anchor: $12, illustrated). In this engaging journal, the American biologist/author recounts his struggle to establish the world’s first jaguar preserve. When he arrived in the remote Cockscomb Mountains of Belize, Rabinowitz was intent on protecting the largest predatory cat in the New World, but he soon discovered the problem involved more setting aside an area of the virgin rain forest as a national park. Descendants of the Mopan Mayas still practiced slash-and-burn agriculture in the Cockscomb Range; as he befriended these people, Rabinowitz began to question the morality of disrupting their traditional way of life. Rich American sportsmen, eager to destroy cats for trophies, and local farmers who assumed any jaguar represented a threat to their livestock further complicated the situation. Rabinowitz also learned that skill in gathering scientific data may ultimately prove less valuable in the struggle to save endangered species than the social skills needed to convince government officials that these animals are worth saving. His discoveries about the people around him--and himself--give Rabinowitz’s work a richness many nature books lack.