Rare jaguar caught on camera drinking from Arizona watering hole
The male, named Cinco, is only the fifth jaguar seen in southern Arizona in 15 years. The sighting gives conservationists hope for their future.
The big cat breathed heavily, taking in the twilight air. It had lumbered up one of southern Arizona’s “sky islands”—mountaintop respites of green in the beige sea of the surrounding desert—to get a drink shortly after sunset.
Unbeknownst to the jaguar, a camera attached to the base of a small tree near the watering hole was recording. Volunteers and scientists with the University of Arizona’s Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center, who set up the camera, have dubbed the male they captured in March on video Jaguar Number Five, or “Cinco” for short.
Arizona's newest jaguar, first spotted in photos late last year after wandering across the border from Mexico, and then captured on video in March, is just the fifth the group has documented. For big cat enthusiasts, the imagery provides evidence the predators can still survive in this rugged stretch of borderlands if given the chance after being largely wiped out from Arizona decades ago.
“This is not a random detection,” says Susan Malusa, director of the Wild Cat Center, whose group collects data on wild cats to inform conservation decisions. “It is part of a long-term pattern.”
The once and future king of cats
The Western Hemisphere's largest cat once roamed all the way up to the Grand Canyon. But both hunting and habitat loss decimated jaguar populations, not only in Arizona but also across its range stretching through Central and South America down to Argentina. The species has lost more than 50 percent of its home across the Americas.
More recently, jaguars have quietly crept back across the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the past 15 years, the Wild Cat Center has spotted five different jaguars—all males—more than 240 times in Arizona, according to Malusa. “Jaguars are very much culturally tied to the Southwest,” Malusa says. “They're this iconic species.”
The elusive predator, which hunts at night and tends to avoid humans, has long been difficult to spot. “We saw neither hide nor hair of him,” naturalist Aldo Leopold wrote of jaguars after traveling the area in 1922. But those who visited the region have historically felt the jaguar’s presence, he said. “No campfire died without talk of him,” Leopold wrote. “No dog curled up for the night, save at his master's feet; he needed no telling that the king of cats still ruled the night.”
To capture the king of cats on camera, Malusa oversees an army of 45 volunteers who hike to about 120 spots in and around Coronado National Forest near the border to check remote wildlife cameras. The volunteers replenish batteries and check memory cards for images and video of jaguars, mountain lions and ocelots.
To get to the watering hole where he had set up a camera, volunteer Chris Schnaufer trekked off trail across a hillside, dodging rocky dropoffs and barrel cactuses until he reached a streambed. He climbed around several steep waterfalls, being careful with each step so as not to get pricked by an agave plant known as a shin dagger.
“Everything in Arizona has thorns,” Schnaufer says. “If you're not careful where you step, they'll actually stick you in the leg.”
“They usually draw blood,” he adds.
Finally, the 63-year-old followed a bear trail, making enough noise to ensure he was left alone until reaching the camera at the watering hole. Schnaufer was thrilled to find that his camera caught Cinco in March drinking there shortly after sunset. He immediately texted Malusa and others at the Wild Cat Center about the discovery.
“He actually stayed there for probably close to 5 minutes, just getting a drink, looking around, getting another drink and then finally walking off completely at ease,” Malusa said of Cinco. “As quickly as he appeared, he just disappeared into the trees.”
Crossing the border on paw
Cameras aren’t the only means of tracking cats and other wildlife across Arizona’s sky islands. The Wild Cat Center is also sampling water and soil for DNA left by jaguars and other animals. And volunteers checking on cameras take plastic bags with them in case they come across any cat scat.
“It's pretty dry out there, so it's a good chance to find intact fecal samples,” said Karla Vargas, an Arizona State University conservation scientist who collaborates with the Wild Cat Center. She is currently analyzing the DNA found in jaguar droppings for a window into the cats’ diet.
Though first protected in 1972 under a precursor to the Endangered Species Act, jaguars still have a long way to go to reestablish themselves north of the border. No breeding female has been found in the United States since the last litter of kittens was born in 1910. “Females just don't move as much,” said John Polisar, a wildlife conservationist who has worked on jaguars for 30 years. “They stay kind of close to where they started, and males ramble.”
And now, the federal government’s ongoing expansion of the border wall threatens to cut off the few males that wander north from the rest of the population.
Jaguars would not climb a border wall that is 26 to 30 feet tall, says Aaron Flesch, a wildlife population ecologist at the University of Arizona who is not affiliated with the Wild Cat Center, “even though they might be able to physically do it.”
Some portions of the border wall have "doggy doors” to allow javelinas and other small animals through. But the openings, which are about the size of a 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper, are too tiny not only for jaguars, which can grow up to around 350 pounds, but also for black bears, bighorn sheep and other large mammals.
Even the movement of some birds, like low-flying ferruginous pygmy owls, are impeded by border walls, according to Flesch. Dividing wildlife with walls, he said, puts populations at risk of shrinking or even disappearing.
“You immediately relegate that smaller population unit to higher extinction risk because small populations are just more vulnerable to random events like a disease or a fire or some other issue,” Flesch said. “The jaguar is a perfect species as an example of what we stand to lose,” he adds.
For now, Malusa is happy to see Cinco thriving in southern Arizona. “This jaguar appears very healthy, very well fed, strong.”
“He's a beast,” she adds. “He's a big guy.”
