In November 2019, the Peruvian government discovered two small jaguars in a space in Chanchamayo, in the central region of the Amazon, the cubs were so young that they still had a component of the umbilical cord attached; his mother was nowhere to be found, a court proceeding was opened against the alleged poachers and the cubs were taken to a specialized zoo, died in a few weeks, the separation of the forest and his mother can be fatal to the little jaguars.
The cubs were among 86 seizures related to the species through the Peruvian government between 2015 and 2020. In addition to animals, the government recovered tusks, skins, skulls and other parts of the frame, according to the National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR). Studies through SERFOR and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) imply that the nine jaguar-related pieces seized in 2019 account for less than 10% of what can be discovered in some illegal markets in the country.
Seizures are, in fact, the tip of the iceberg for the illicit jaguar portion and specimen industry in Peru, so far home to the largest feline population in South America, only in Brazil. The total wild population of the species is approximately 163,000, according to 2018 estimates. through the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC) and the NGO for the conservation of large Panthera felines.
In this series of surveys, Mongabay Latam begins with a regional snapshot of the jaguar’s plight. We interviewed more than 10 scientists to read about the threats and methods of conservation of this species in six countries: Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
A four-month examination through WCS and SERFOR in Peru shows that the illegal industry in jaguar portions is no more unusual than previously thought. Visiting 21 sites in Iquitos, the capital of the Amazon region of Loreto, researchers discovered 96 jaguar pieces for sale in markets, craft shops, docks and even hotels. Fangs and jaguar claws embedded in necklaces and bracelets were discovered, while skins, almost like paintings or carpets, were hung on public roads.
The survey also covered two other villages in the Peruvian Amazon, Pucallpa (in the Ucayali region) and Puerto Maldonado (in Madre de Dios), as well as Puno in the Andes. In total, they discovered 102 pieces of jaguar for public sale: 45% of them included skins, 37% tusks, 14% claws and the remaining 4% were jaguar fat and skulls; three-quarters of these pieces have been incorporated into the craft industry. The value of the tusks, according to the buyer, oscillated between 30 and 1000 soles ($9 to $280).
“We have standardized animal trafficking; in Latin America we are used to seeing such scenes,” says Liliana Juregui, an IUCN-trained environmental justice in the Netherlands, whose organization coordinated research in Bolivia and Suriname, where the first evidence of increased trafficking in portions of foreign jaguars to Asia was discovered seven years ago.
Despite the seriousness of the problem, knowledge of seizures of jaguar portions in these countries has been recently updated. In Bolivia, the authorities ceased to be counted in early 2019 as attention to environmental emergencies such as large wildfires, as well as political unrest that led to a government replacement, according to Angela Nunez, a jaguar biologist studying traffic. as a component of the Operation Jaguar Project (Operation Jaguar Project) in Bolivia.
“Since 2014, we have seized some 700 tusks, adding a seizure in China [of tusks] originating in Bolivia,” says Nuez, highlighting the desire to continue tracking this environmental crime. According to Bolivia’s Ministry of Environment and Water, more than 20 lawsuits have been filed in connection with illegal fang trafficking, five of which have resulted in convictions for criminals.
Research conducted through the IUCN Netherlands also revealed that the call for jaguar portions in Bolivia began in 2013 and was announced through radio stations and posters distributed in rural areas. Between 2014 and 2016, the traffic challenge continued, with 300 portions of jaguar discovered in 16 postal packages, 14 of which were sent through Chinese citizens in Bolivia.
The facts linking the trafficking of jaguar portions to Asia, especially China, are sensitive, as the peak affected countries, such as Bolivia and Suriname, have sought the challenge diplomatically through the building of alliances with the Chinese network on their territory.
But if there is one thing scientists in the six countries agree on, it is the link between jaguar trafficking and the presence of corporations involved in China-supported infrastructure projects in areas with high biodiversity, such as the Amazon. Conservation Biology tested the dating between wild cat trafficking and Chinese investments in South and Central America.
Among the main findings, traffic has increased and Chinese citizens involved in illicit activities do not belong to Asian communities already established in those countries, but are staff who go to the Amazon to paint on megaprojects as new dams and roads. “corporations have invested heavily in emerging countries, first in Africa and then in South America,” says Guyanese geographer Anthony Cummings, who is also investigating jaguar portion trafficking in his country. “While we do not seek to stigmatize, it is vital to be aware of the bond. “
In Suriname, for example, IUCN has discovered signs of trafficking since 2003, when a former forest service worker contacted through the owner of a Chinese supermarket in the capital, Paramaribo, who was looking for fangs and jaguar claws. Esteban Payon, regional director of Panthera’s program for North South America, says that due to the significant decline of tigers in Asia, demand for portions of large felines used in classical medicine appears to have been met through portions of other large felines. the reasons why jaguar portion trafficking is developing in Latin American countries.
Large-scale illegal mining and forestry activities have been observed in the Brownsberg Natural Park in Suriname. An estimated 40,000 other people live in and around these mining camps, and only another 18,000 people are officially registered. The links between this activity and wildlife trafficking are under investigation.
This is a vital hypothesis, according to Jeuregui of the IUCN. “We have links to illegal logging and its trade, or to gold roads. Traffic routes are cross-border and take advantage of their porosity,” he says, referring to how criminal teams use the same routes for gold, timber and wildlife trafficking.
Although jaguar portion trafficking is the apparent threat, there are other apparent risks to the continent’s main predator. Cummings mentions two in Guyana: a confrontation between jaguars and shepherds or farmers, and with gold miners in the Guyana jungle, the two teams that kill animals in retaliation for attacking their livestock, crops or pets.
“Despite requests for help from Latin American countries, it has not been imaginable [to determine their point of protection],” says Rodrigo Medellin, scientist at the Latin American Alliance for Jaguar Conservation. ‘Even the leopard has been classified as endangered, although it has a greater occupancy domain than jaguar,’ it says of the species of large felines discovered in Africa and Asia.
In Venezuela, María Fernanda Puerto, founder of Proyecto Sebraba, an NGO that studies jaguars, says that there are no official figures of seizures and that jaguars are threatened by the use of their coins in Saneria, a formula of popular trust in some regions. has even attracted parishioners to political power. “We have reports of local intake of these animals, and there is a threat of sex when catching a jaguar or occelote. Once it has been done, in a few hours [the report] disappears,” Puerto says.
In his investigation into threats to jaguars, he met a prisoner imprisoned in the south of Lake Maracaibo with a jaguar skin hanging from his cell phone as a form of power. “It’s exposed there, even if it’s a crime. “
In other countries, such as Ecuador, where no significant evidence of jaguar portion traffic has been found, alerts continue to be generated due to increased tensions from deforestation and habitat loss. Array Galo Zapata-Ríos, clinical director of WCS in Ecuador, says that in the Amazon region of the country, there has been a habitat loss of 30%.
“In the Chocó region, 90% have now been deforested due to the advance of livestock and agriculture, such as the cultivation of African palm [oil],” he says. This domain is a vital jaguar room between Ecuador and Colombia. The expansion of these monocultures near herbal spaces also occurs in Peru and Brazil, where these spaces play a very vital role in the conservation of large felines.
For one species it is vital to perceive it, this applies to jaguar populations in each of the six countries in question, where research began in 2013 after the first evidence of increased jaguar portion traffic in Bolivia.
Recent discoveries, such as 60% relief in the original habitat of the species in South America, imply that the risk is significant, some countries of diversity, aware of this problem, have begun to invest in the studies necessary to classify the conservation prestige of those For example, the Silvestre Wildlife Red (red books on wildlife) in Bolivia Venezuela and Ecuador, the national equivalents of the IUCN Red List, classify jaguar populations in the Amazon as vulnerable and the population that inhabits the Ecuadorian coast as vulnerable. In Peru, the species is listed as at close risk, however, scientists led by José Luis Mena, director of the WCS Species Initiative in Peru, must bring the combined studies carried out in recent years to their point of protection.
For scientists such as Rodrigo Medellín and Antonio de los angeles Torre of the Latin American Alliance for jaguar Conservation, there is already enough evidence to recategorize the conservation prestige of the jaguar at the continental level, De los angeles Torre says that only by raising the prestige of the vulnerable – through moving it from “almost threatened” to “threatened” – will it be imaginable to accumulate resources for its conservation , and in turn draw the attention of the public and politicians to their care. “A foreign organization’s call for attention can be heard more than that of local biologists and ecologists,” he says.
However, there is one more step that you want to take with categorization, and for which more studies are also needed: habitat protection.
In Peru, says José Luis Mena, in recent years five units of conservation of the jaguar, or JCU, spaces that deserve to be by law as vital habitats for jaguars, but that have not been identified as such throughout the state have been known.
“We want to identify the spaces of precedence for this conservation, because [jaguars live] in spaces,” mena says. “There is also an investigation into the spaces that these corridors deserve to sustain. “
Peruvian scientists have begun collecting data in the jungles of northern Loreto and southern Madre de Dios, but the country’s central forests and the Ucayali region still want to be covered, Mena says. detected, with six of the 11 seizures recorded between 2019 and 2020 in those areas.
The lack of knowledge in Bolivia is also evident, with many questions still unanswered: where are the jaguars?, how many are there?What spaces do they deserve to be? According to Operation Jaguar Project, the studios have focused mainly on two areas: Madidi and Kaa-Iya National Parks in the Gran Chaco region. “Apart from areas where the jaguar is the maximum risk, few studies are conducted on the species,” he says.
Even in spaces like the Tariqua National Wildlife Reserve, where jaguars move freely, there is no transparent concept of their number, Nuez says. The need for data is more pressing in the face of increased oil and gold extraction and hydropower activities in parks. Operation Jaguar, an IUCN assignment in the Netherlands in Bolivia, Guyana and Suriname, aims to preserve the big cats by identifying the most vulnerable spaces to focus on.
Across South America, jaguar populations face very similar hazards, with little difference between other countries in the range. Ecuador also faces a lack of data and has begun updating its national jaguar conservation plan to identify existing studies and who will be interested in further studies.
Jessica Pacheco, from WWF Ecuador’s forest and freshwater program, says there are already data on the jaguar population in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Production Reserve, but not, for example, on the population that crosses the Achuar indigenous territory across the border with Peru. that is, interested in reading the last domain because, he says, “it is not a protected national domain,” yet it has maintained the highest degrees of wildlife conservation.
With a list of spaces to explore, WCS’s Galo Zapata-Roos adds the Andean foothills and corridors that connect them to the Ecuadorian Amazon. “We know very little about what’s happening in those spaces and there are records of jaguars above 2,000 meters [6,600 feet],” he said, adding that WCS will announce an assignment in those places in 2021. Zapata-Ríos says cross-border corridors, such as those linking Yasun and Cuyabeno to La Paya National Park in Colombia or Goeppi National Park in Peru, don’t forget. “The conservation of the jaguar will have to have a cross-border approach,” he says.
In Venezuela, to reaffirm the importance of the link between jaguar populations, María Puerto de Proyecto Sebraba uses satellite images for routes that can link sierra de Perijo park to Juan Manuel’s Swamps. Esteban Payon de Panthera says that to complete the puzzle, it would be ideal to revive the proposal of a park that would link Colombia and Venezuela, in the Sierra del Perij region, where jaguars are known to move.
But Puerto’s enthusiasm is at risk with the truth of the political scene in Venezuela. “The salon connecting Colombia will have to be protected, but this proposal has already been rejected through Venezuela’s Ministry of Environment,” he said, adding that there is no plan for jaguar conservation in his country.
For 12 years, Puerto has been concentrating his paintings in Juan Manuel’s Ciénagas National Park, south of Lake Maracaibo in Zulia state, where it is estimated that there are up to 3. 37 jaguars consisting of one hundred square kilometers, significant figure since the jaguar Population density for venezuela’s total is estimated at 1. 97, which equates to 100 km2 , with about 11,500 large felines in the prairies, according to a study by Wlodzimierz Jedrzejewski and other scientists from IVIC and PantheraArray.
Other studies on jaguars in Venezuela can come only with the los Llanos domain and the state of Amazonas. In Guyana and Suriname, studies have focused mainly on threats to jaguar populations. According to Jedrzejewski’s study, there are about 11,500 jaguars in both countries, there are still not enough studies there to verify this.
Other studies on jaguars in Venezuela can come only with the los Llanos domain and the state of Amazonas. In Guyana and Suriname, studies have focused mainly on threats to jaguar populations. According to Jedrzejewski’s study, there are about 11,500 jaguars in both countries, there are still not enough studies there to verify this.
In Guyana, biologist and geographer Cummings has been reading jaguars in his local country since 2014 and says that the Government of Guyana, represented through the Wildlife Management and Conservation Commission, is lately interested in systematizing the knowledge generated through studies, such as the one he conducted. about the prestige of the animal in 4 indigenous communities a few months ago using photo traps and drones, however, this study was discontinued due to quarantine, expected to resume before the end of the year.
At the end of 2018, 14 of the 18 countries that host jaguars came together to publicize the Jaguar 2030 Plan, a roadmap for animal conservation and the 30 landscapes it inhabits. This plan highlights the spaces of precedence to ensure the survival of species, such as JCU, corridors linking the internal and external territories of countries, and especially the importance of protecting the herbal spaces that are part of their habitat.
“The protected herbal spaces are the ones that will save you from threats caused by humans,” says Vania Tejeda of WWF Peru, who adds that a recent WWF study on spaces in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia has verified the effectiveness of these spaces to maintain the stability of jaguar populations and ensure forest health.
There are examples in South America: in Bolivia, Rob Wallace, a scientist who has been reading jaguars for more than 20 years, highlights the Tambopata-Madidi cross-border landscape that encompasses the herbal spaces of Peru (Tambopata National Reserve and Bahuaja-Sonene National Park) and Bolivia (Madidi National Park and Lajas Biosphere Reserve).
Since the beginning of 2000, Wallace, along with his colleagues Guido Ayala and Maria Viscarra, has conducted photo trap studies that revealed a density of 0. 5 jaguars consisting of one hundred km2 in 2001. In 2008, the density was 2 and in 2014 However, since then, hunters have exerted strong pressure on the species. In 2019, scientists conducted a new surveillance that will more reliably illustrate the existing scenario of the great feline.
Wallos angelesce emphasizes the importance of joint country-to-country paintings and uses as evidence the map of angelic subpopulations of South American jaguars, according to studies conducted in 2018 through Antonio de los angeles Torre and other scientists of the Latin American Alliance for jaguar Conservation, 26 of the 34 angelestions subpopulos are located in cross-border areas, which is also one of the main reasons defined in the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species belonging to (CMS) for the jaguar to be included in Appendices I and II. a country to accentuate efforts to conserve the species and paint with other countries of diversity on cross-border protection.
“Positive and negative points converge in the fight for the survival of this feline,” says Rodrigo Medellin of the Latin American Alliance for jaguar Conservation. While traffic pressures and habitat loss are evident, it notes that foreign conservation strategies, such as Jaguar 2030, as well as developing an interest in expanding studies and taking steps to protect jaguars, have lower IUCN and CITES World Wildlife Trade Treaty. Medellin says that each country will also have to engage in concerted action over the next five years.
One such action is the Jaguar Corridor, a Panthera initiative that is part of jaguar 2030 and aims to maintain genetic continuity between JUS through key cross-border stretches, covering 6 million square kilometers, approximately 3 times the length of Mexico. says: “The Jaguar Corridor serves as a layer to generate greater sustainable decisions for South American development. This means understanding where to build a road and where to allow spaces for agriculture. “
Pacheco of WWF Ecuador says that countries deserve the sociocultural conditions of communities close to the spaces where jaguars are discovered as part of their conservation strategies. “By updating the national conservation plan, we are taking into account this link with communities. it will have to be observed in a comprehensive way, taking into account the educational aspect and the exchange of information,” he says.
Sometimes it can be difficult to sell the concept of conservation to the local population, even with animals as charismatic as jaguar. But for guyanese scientist Cummings, it is mandatory to start with situations. “If we know that water is directly similar to the presence of jaguars in forests, we may see things differently: that the fitness of the environment is directly similar to my fitness, that when an animal is annihilated, it has implications for my quality of life. “
This story was first reported through the Latam team on Mongabay and published here on our Latam online page on June 17, 2020.
Read more of Mongabay’s stories about jaguars here and big cats in general, lions and tigers, here.
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