Jaguar Conservation: JAGUARS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

The vast distribution and ecological variability of the jaguar across its range requires setting priorities for its conservation. Geographic priorities should be planned on a scale commensurate with the scale of the species. Given the wide variety of habitat types where jaguars are found, WCS researchers followed an ecologically based system developed for conservation priority setting in tigers. Our goal in conducting this exercise and ultimately developing the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Jaguar Conservation Program is not just to save jaguars, but to assure the long-term survival of ecologically distinct populations of jaguar.

Assembling ecoregions developed by the World Wildlife Fund – North America for North and Latin America, we developed Jaguar Geographic Regions (JGRs). These were used as geographic surrogates for differences in jaguar ecology and as the basic planning unit for assigning priorities that became the foundation for the Jaguar Conservation Program (MAP).

Thirty of the world's jaguar experts were invited to attend. These experts were invited to meet our goals in that we wanted complete coverage of the jaguar's range, a mix of younger with more experienced researchers, an emphasis on range nation scientists, recent field experience with jaguars, and the top experts in the field of jaguar research and conservation.

We sent our experts a map of their specific JGR and asked them to identify their area of knowledge of whether jaguars were present or absent. We then asked them to fill out datasheets for every point observation where they or someone they knew had evidence for a jaguar or its sign within the last 10 years. We asked our experts to map the approximate jaguar range where jaguars were present, and finally we asked our experts to map important areas for long-term jaguar conservation based on their assessment of jaguar populations, prey, habitat, and threats to jaguars. With each level of data, we asked for associated data and information. This data was received in New York and synthesized to produce working maps for analysis, review, and distribution at the workshop.

In March 1999, WCS, with support from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Jaguar Cars, sponsored the Jaguars in the New Millennium workshop. This workshop was designed to assess the status and distribution of jaguars across the range and to develop geographic priorities to guide conservation of jaguars into the next millennium.

Our first day was spent going through the data and trying to resolve conflicts in order to build consensus amongst experts on what the final maps should look like in terms of approximate jaguar range and the jaguar conservation units.

These data were subsequently revised in New York to produce final maps indicating extent of knowledge (MAP), point data (MAP), approximate jaguar range (MAP), and the Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs) (MAP).

Once we had resolved our discrepancies in the data, we moved on to assessing the factors that were good, medium, or bad for jaguar survival. 6.1 million square kilometer or 70% of the jaguars current range was considered to have a high probability for jaguar survival (MAP).

We then prioritized JCUs across the range of habitats available to jaguars. We also developed a weighting scheme and combined this with an individual expert score. We then ranked and applied these scores across the range of the jaguar (MAP).

Finally, we developed a list of research priorities that helped shape the components of the Jaguar Conservation Program.

Click HERE to download Jaguar GIS data from the workshop. It is a compressed ".zip" file - click HERE if you need the WinZip utility.

The results of this range-wide priority-setting exercise will be published in the February 2002 issue of Conservation Biology.