The Odyssey to save the Tigre de las Américas

In September 2019, a male jaguar crossed a chamber-brand specially installed on the banks of the Bermejo River, in the Argentine Chaco.The finding was celebrated almost like a miracle.More than six years ago that the traces of the greatest feline in Latin America had disappeared from an area that occupies more than 600.000 square kilometers in the northeastern country.

Days later, the specimen - which would later be baptized as Qarambtá, "difficult to kill or destroy" in the Qom language, one of the original ethnic groups of the region - was captured by scientists and park rangers of the El Impenetrable National Park, aGPS necklace, and in that territory it continues its life without concrete evidence that some other peak accompanies it in its wanderings.

That loneliness of Qaramtá is, perhaps, the most dramatic indicative of the danger of extinction that crosses the Panthera onca;The predator that occupies the maximum step in the trophic chain of the continent.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorizes its status as "almost threatened", but a detail look discovers that the situation is worse than you can imagine with the naked eye.“When we started studying the species a little more thoroughly we found more worrying data than we foreshadowed.There are 34 subpopulations distributed throughout Latin America, and of them, 33 are in concrete danger of extinction, because 90% of the 60.000 Jaguares that we calculate exist currently lives in the Amazon, ”says José González-Maya, director of the Water and Land Conservation Project (ProCat) of Colombia and Jaguares specialist.

The data is scary, and not only from a scientific vision.It is known that for an ecosystem the disappearance of its top predator implies an imbalance of unpredictable consequences, since populations of intermediate species increase and this increase impacts in turn on the animals that occupy the lowest steps and in vegetation.But if that authentic "king of the jungle" was considered, and in several cases it is still, a mythological being for many of the peoples of the region, the cultural damage of a possible extinction would be as important as the biological.

The Olmecs who mainly live.It happened more than 1.500 years and earned the American tiger his entry to the Olympus of that civilization.For the Olmecs, the first sun that reigned in the heavens was Tezcatlipoca, but when it was displaced by Quetzalcoátl it became a jaguar, the deity that ruled the nights but also had influence on what happened the rest of the day.

Spiritual protector par excellence of rulers, priests and shamans, the face of the jaguar became common in sculptures and sizes, and his figure was a symbol of power.From the Maya and the Aztecs to the Arhuacos of the Colombian Amazon and the Cucusi of Bolivia, they considered this gigantic cat about 80 centimeters high and about 100 kilos of weight as in charge of holding the sun, protecting the night orensure hunting and food.

"Even today, the Jaguar is enormous in the cosmogony of numerous indigenous communities, because it is a being that represents power and balance," explains Fernando Trujillo, scientific director of the Omacha Foundation, in Colombia.

The passage of time, however, would modify that admiring vision, and after colonization, its invincible aura faded and a sinister fan of threats began to fence it without remedy.

"Without a doubt, the loss of habitat is the main problem suffered by jaguars, and also the most difficult to stop," González-Maya accepts, and gives as an example what happens in Brazil and Colombia: "They are countries that are suffering ratesof historical deforestation, and there is very little that a local NGO can do for stopping extremely powerful machinery ”.

Walking a lot is one of the most notable features of the jaguars.Much means 20, 30, 40 or even more kilometers a day, either to look for food or a couple to mate.To this peculiarity the territorial nature of the males is added.Each can control an area that goes from 5 to 500 square kilometers without admitting the presence of another individual of the same gender, which leads to a simple conclusion: a very wide surface is necessary for a large population to live without overlappingits domains, and as these spaces are shrinking, the abundance of specimens will decrease.

The species is still present in 18 countries, from northern Mexico to Argentina, but although at first glance it can be believed that it is an immense extension, the sum of the concrete sites where it can be found represents only 46% of the area ofHistorical distribution, about seven million square kilometers available, against the 19 million that are calculated composed their historical habitat.

Worse: except in the Amazon, the current territories in which the American tiger finds the necessary conditions to move, feed, reproduce and raise their offspring are extremely fragmented.They are usually forest spots without connection to each other, which adds a difficulty to long -term survival: the existing groups in each of them are condemned to inundogamy.The result is what is called genetic erosion.The group in question loses variability and, sooner or later, it ceases to be genetically viable to respond to changes in the environment.

The demographic transformation process lived in the American continent contributed a new ingredient to the demystification of the jaguar.The new inhabitants arrived after colonization did not see the third largest feline in the world (only the lion and the tiger surpass him in bite size and strength) as a God but as a rival, a challenge, a coveted piece.Little by little, his character of being superior was restricted to the descendant communities of the original peoples;And on the contrary, his hunting was gaining a place in the growing new culture.

"In regions such as the Chaco, who killed a yaguareté acquired automatic prestige among its neighbors, which constituted an important incentive to shoot without regrets to any specimen that walked through the mountain," says Verónica Quiroga, a biologist at the University ofCórdoba and project member Yaguareté, one of the initiatives that attempts to avoid the extinction of the species in Argentina.

The abrupt expansion of the agricultural border occurred during the last decades in most American countries - especially Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Colombia - added an element of conflict to the difficult relationship between the Panthera onca and humans.The deforestation that limits the long jaguars walks also reduces the availability of dams, which leads them to seek food among domestic animals that can wander through areas where grasslands are confused with the forest or jungle.Thus, the American tiger became a declared enemy for peasants whose subsistence depends on a few heads of cattle or goats.

The problem of hunting reaches an even greater dimension in Bolivia."Jaguar traffic is not only a conservation problem, but of organized crime," says Andrea Crosta, executive and co -founder director of Earth League International, an NGO that defines itself as "the first intelligence agency to protect theLand".It was from an investigation carried out by this entity that the presence of at least three criminal groups dedicated to trafficking from Jaguar in that country could be discovered, all fundamentally composed of Chinese citizens.

"Jaguar parts traffic cases began to increase incredible from 2014, and relate them to the migration of Chinese citizens to our country," says the Bolivian biologist Ángela Núñez, participant of the Jaguar operation project, promoted byThe Dutch IUCN division.

The striking skin of the feline always attracted the attention of the human being, and for decades it was the most precious trophy for hunters.But, in recent times, the objectives have changed.A transformation that has its origin on the other side of the world.The last report on the World Wildlife Crime issued by the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime point to the decline in the population of Asian Tigers as the main cause."According to IUCN, Jaguar's bones are considered a replacement for those of the Tigre in traditional medicine in Asia," says the report.

Fangs used as amulets, jewels or healing elements;genitals to which aphrodisiac powers are attributed;or viscera and other parts of the body turned into a paste that is sold at the price of gold as an alleged treatment for arthritis or sexual dysfunctions are the new threats to the king of the American jungles.The massive arrival of Chinese companies to Latin America complete a macabro mix.In addition to Bolivia, also in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Surinam, Guyana, and to a lesser extent in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil an increase in illegal traffic is being detected.

It is precisely this multiplication of threats that has alerted the international scientific community and encourages the implementation of multiple projects, national and international, to cut the bleeding when you still are in time to avoid catastrophe.

In 2002, the creation of the so -called Jaguar Conservation Units was the initial kick so that inheriting initiatives of all kinds throughout the continent arose.The units are territories that house populations of at least 50 individuals of reproductive age and in which there is a continuous availability of dams and a habitat in good condition.

A decade and a half later, the progressive awareness crystallized in December 2018 with the presentation of the Jaguar 2030 Plan.The strategy implies a commitment of the 18 countries by which the species is distributed with a very specific goal: to implement financial and political efforts to protect and even expand the habitats that the American tiger needs to develop.The plan is committed to increasing the amount of protected areas as well as the control that is exercised in them, establishing and maintaining biological runners that allow connectivity between the different Jaguares groups, mitigating conflicts in areas with human activities and, of course, fightingthe hunt of any kind.

“Almost in all subpopulations there are conservation work.Keep in mind that since it is an ‘umbrella species’, with the care of the jaguar, many others are being protected in the trophic chain, ”says José González-Maya.

This biologist who divides his activity between Colombia and Costa Rica leads one of the most original proposals in the fight to alive one of the symbols of Latin America's wild nature: the creation of the Jaguar Friendly label for commercial products that are made in the region.“In the world conservation movement there is a growing tendency to think that long -term sustainability must be a social process, dialogue between the parties, and from that perspective it is necessary to find coexistence formulas, ensure that landscapes are shared and notnecessarily a conservation goal must go against production and economic development, ”reflects the director of ProCat Colombia.

Member of the Network of Friendly Companies of Wildlife (Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network), a worldwide platform that offers products such as green tea friend of the elephants or tourism friend of the gorillas, Jaguar Friendly began its work with Del Café.“The idea is to modify and adapt the productive handles to contribute to maintain the habitat and dams that the jaguar needs to survive;And from there, transform that task into a market incentive.The label allows access to differential audiences that are willing to pay a surcharge for the attributes and characteristics that these productive systems possess, ”explains González-Maya.

The worldwide fame of the coffees of Colombia and Costa Rica was used as a test pilot, since in both countries the plantations coincide with areas of distribution of jaguares, and the experiment had very good reception.The Costa Rican Jaguar Friendly coffee is sold in the United States under the pure brand, thanks to an alliance with the Phoenix Zoo and a coffee toaster company that reduces production costs, and is also being exported to Romania and Netherlands.Meanwhile, the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia is beginning to market its friendly coffee with the American Tigers through the El Camino del Jaguar brand.The idea, in addition, extends to other products: “We are starting pilot projects with cocoa in southern Colombia and Honduras, and with ecological leather in Bolivia and Paraguay to feed the fashion market from a friendly livestock managementWith the Yaguaretés ”, González-Maya gets excited.

This type of proposals pursues a cultural and educational objective that perhaps is less visible but is equally transcendent: change the look that the rural inhabitant can have towards jaguars to decrease or eliminate conflicts and, thus, also, also the hunting.

The last symposium about the Mexican Jaguar, made in the first days of December, offered the good news of a growth - mode, but finally growth - in the number of specimens censored in the country.Mexico is the only state where there are concrete and reliable figures of the species, and the total number went from 4.000 in 2010 to 4.800 in 2018, that is, 20% increase.

The work that Ivonne Cassaigne, a veterinary doctor, performs in three districts of Sonora is undoubtedly collaborating for this to happen.The Mexican scientist did a long task of observing the behavior of Jaguares and Pumas through the-TRAMPA cameras and the installation of monitoring necklaces in several specimens until she could demonstrate to the farmers of those areas that the great felines prefer to hunt vengs or pecaríesBefore cows, and for their cattle, the best recipe was not to increase the amount of wild dams available.The teaching worked, and currently the owners of five ranches that total 30.000 hectares have stopped hunting animals that serve as food to the tiger and no longer see the jaguar as an enemy.

The installation of observation stations with chambers-trampa is also the axis of the Jaguar project carried out by the Guyra Paraguay organization.On the other hand, the National Conservation Plan of the Jaguar contemplates actions of all kinds in Peru, the country with the second largest population on the contineillegal.

Extinguished in El Salvador and Uruguay, and about to be in Ecuador, the situation reaches another critical point in Argentina, the southern border of the species distribution area.Without safe figures, it is estimated that there are no more than 250 to 300 copies of Yaguareté distributed in three very specific areas: the Paranaense jungle, in Misiones, the northeastern end of the country;Las Yungas, a strip of mountain jungles in the northwest;And the Great Chaco, where Qarambá exercises his authority without apparent company.

In Misiones, the task developed by the Atlantic Forest Research Center (CEIBA), a group of scientists gathered in defense of the permanence and recovery of that ecosystem shared with Brazil and Paraguay, is translated into a soft but constant rise of individuals.Environmental education carried out with farmers and producers of Yerba Mate and other crops, together with the creation of provincial parks and biological corridors that allow connecting different protected areas are the main foci of a work that is done in coordination with local authorities.Thus, if in 2005 the estimated yaguaretés number was about 30, currently the figure approaches the hundred.

The Yungas, a territory favored by its difficult access, maintains a population between 120 and 150 copies, which begins to extend east, among other reasons thanks to the Protected Productive Landscapes program, which the Proyungas Foundation launched a decade ago andthat, like Jaguar Friendly, it promotes the integration of environmental conservation criteria with those of the economic development of private activity.

But it is undoubtedly in the Chaco, a very fragile ecosystem in which the presence of the foal predator spares fundamental to achieve some balance, where the most difficult battle is fought.The fingerprint records of recent years suggest the presence of about 15 or 20 Yaguaretés in freedom, even if there is only a reliable evidence of two: the copy of the El Impenetrable National Park and another male that is allowed to be seen circumstantially on the banks of the banks of thePilcomayo River National Park, bordering Paraguay.The reintroduction then appears as a prominent horizon to recover its presence in the area.

The Rewilding Argentina Foundation (FR), which during this year released seven copies in the Iberá National Park, a wetland area where the species had been extinguished for 70 years, is responsible for monitoring the daily adventures of Qaramtá.Their method, consisting of raising in semicolutivity and without human contact puppies to which their mothers teach them to hunt so that they can survive in the wild, is currently repeated at the El Teuco scientific station, installed inside the El Impenetrable National Park.

There are currently Nalá and Takajay, the children of Qaramtá and Tania, the female born and raised in captivity that the Foundation moved from Iberá to "anchor" to Qarambtá to the park.The idea is that in a couple of years the little ones can walk with their father so that the presence of the Yaguaretés ceases to be a strangeness in the region.

Legend has it that Jaguar's skin was from an unpolluted yellow, but one day a monkey dirty it with an mamey.Fracted, the jaguar killed him from a slice and, in punishment, the Lord of the Montes encouraged the monkeys to launch them Mamey from the trees to the jaguares.Since then, the spots, different in each individual, identify the American tiger.

Today, the points that indicate on the maps the presence of the cat on the continent are smaller and smaller spots.The future will say if we are able to prevent these maps from being as clean as they assure was Jaguar's skin long before the Olmecs elevated it to the category of a god.