Jaguar Spotted Laying Tracks in Southern Arizona’s Desert

A jaguar was photographed by a motion-activated camera set out in southern Arizona to monitor potential jaguar corridors near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The photo, which was shot in early December, gave state game officials new evidence that jaguars, the biggest cats in the Western Hemisphere, visit the southern part of the state and may even live there.

“It is great to know that jaguars are roaming our borderlands, at least occasionally,” said Brad Van Pelt of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “We will continue to monitor the area to see if the animal is a transient or attempting to establish a territory.”

Jaguars were last documented in Arizona in 1996 in the Baboquivari Mountains west of Tucson and in the Peloncillo Mountains along the New Mexico state line near San Simon, Ariz.

Biologists believe the two 1996 photos and the one shot in December captured three separate cats.

The game department isn’t revealing the location of the latest sighting to protect the big cat, which is a young male weighing around 175 pounds.

A team of biologists hopes more photos will help pinpoint the jaguar’s location. Officials would like to capture one, attach a collar with a radio transmitter, then return it to the wild and monitor its movements.

Arizona is believed to be at the northern end of the jaguar’s historic range, which once covered nearly all of Latin America. The closest known population to Arizona now is 135 miles south of Tucson, deep in the Sierra Madre of Mexico, according to game officials.

Conservation groups that want to see the jaguar repopulate the U.S. Southwest were delighted by the new photographic evidence.

“The fact that jaguars are still making it as individuals back to their old habitat means there’s hope for eventual recovery,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity’s office in Silver City, N.M.

Robinson said his group’s first priority is to stabilize the remaining jaguar populations in Mexico--which are threatened by habitat loss--and assess what land on both sides of the border is suitable for jaguars.

“We’re not pushing reintroduction at this time,” Robinson said, “but everything should be on the table.”