From: Tony Povilitis a_povilitis@yahoo.com
To: Tony P <tpovilitis@lifenetnature.org
Subject: Very strange priorities...
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
...And very strange times. The federal government has just made a substantial investment to the tune of $771,000 for a 3-year project to study jaguar presence(see article below) in Arizona and New Mexico. Yet it bemoans a lack of funding when I ask, through the US Fish & Wildlife Service, that it provide staff and financing to collaboratively protect vanishing habitat connectivity for the region's jaguar, Mexican wolf, and other endangered wildlife.
Anyone with an eye toward the landscape knows that the region is facing a very serious habitat fragmentation crisis. Some organizations and individuals are struggling to address this crisis. But they are simply overwhelmed and under-resourced. And time is running out.
So isn't it about time for a robust and adequately funded effort to undertake serious on-the-ground conservation to directly benefit the region's wide-ranging, and in some cases, highly endangered wildlife?
Tony
Tony Povilitis, Ph.D.
Life Net Nature
Willcox, Arizona
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Arizona-New Mexico project aims to learn more about imperiled cats
Camera network will focus on jaguars
- Starting next year, jaguars will be the target of an extensive network of remote cameras placed across Southern Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
In a three-year, $771,000 project that has been greeted warmly by environmentalists((not all enviros) but warily by cattle growers, University of Arizona researchers will try to learn more about the status and presence of the endangered animal.
Fifteen years after the jaguar was listed as endangered in the U.S., this project will try to determine how often it roams from Mexico to the United States and back, said Melanie Culver, the project's principal investigator and a geneticist for the U.S. Geological Survey and the UA's School of Natural Resources.
Referring to the adult male jaguar photographed in Cochise County Saturday, Culver added that the project will try to learn, "Is this the only one?"(how can it be the only one when there have been 5 other sightings over the past decade--see below parapaphs???)
The research project has brought on a UA professor with a history of mediation work, Kirk Emerson, to reach out to environmental groups, ranchers, private landowners and others in an effort to minimize potential conflicts over the research.
There has long been tension among ranchers, environmentalists and government officials over how to conserve and study jaguars.
The cameras will be placed at 120 locations on public and possibly private lands in mountainous terrain - two cameras per site - and checked regularly, said Lisa Haynes, the research project manager and coordinator of the UA's Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center. They'll be located from the Baboquivari Mountains in south-central Arizona on the west to the Animas Mountains in the "boot heel" of New Mexico on the east.
Funding is from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security(the same agency that is fencing off Mexican Jaguars from their historical USA haunts)
Up to five jaguars have been photographed in the region in the past 15 years. Researchers say the new camera work could help determine if this area actually has a resident jaguar population or if the jaguars that roam here are transient migrants into their range's northern fringe from a larger population in Mexico.
Other possible results of the research include:
• Pinpointing movement corridors for jaguars across the mountainous borderlands region.
• Understanding more about how other wildlife relates to jaguars, and about the region's general biodiversity.
• Helping the federal government determine prime jaguar habitat, and prepare a federal recovery plan for the species.(that should be happening already)
• Learning how much impact the U.S.-Mexican border fence, illegal immigrants, and vehicles and equipment used to pursue immigrants has on the animal.
With last week's sighting being the first confirmed jaguar presence in this country since the March 2009 death of the animal dubbed Macho B, UA researchers say they have no idea what their chances are of detecting more jaguars or again seeing the one just photographed.
The researchers will be picking up on a larger scale where the nonprofit Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project left off in 2009 after the controversy over the capture and death of Macho B abruptly ended the remote camera work the group had been doing in Southern Arizona since the early 2000s.
The group's biologist, Emil McCain, pleaded guilty to trying to capture the jaguar without a permit. His five-year probation forbids him from conducting jaguar research in this country.
The federally financed project will use techniques similar to the detection project as far as cameras go, Haynes said. But this project will not follow McCain's practice of putting jaguar scat at camera sites to lure jaguars, the UA researchers said.
"We want to emphasize that this is a noninvasive technique that we'll use -no capture, no touch, no handling," Haynes said.
But the researchers will employ dogs to look for jaguar scat if cameras capture any of the rare cats, Haynes said. It will be analyzed for DNA to identify the species , said Culver, the geneticist.
Activists for two environmental groups that have pushed hard for jaguar protection were delighted that this study will be done.( great groups, are Sky Alliance and center for Bio Diversity.............but the money should be used for habitat protection and mexico/usa border openings rather than camera traps..........the animals are moving back and forth into the usa and is we allow them protection, a breeding population can possibly begin to take place)
"This type of science is long overdue," said Melanie Emerson, executive director of the Sky Island Alliance, a Tucson conservation group.
"This is clearly nonintrusive, which means that the risks that manifested themselves tragically in Macho B's death will not be there," said Michael Robinson, an activist for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, whose lawsuit forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to agree to designate critical habitat and prepare a recovery plan for the jaguar.
The Arizona Cattle Growers Association is not opposed to the research that UA will be doing, said Patrick Bray, the group's executive vice president. But it is concerned about how federal officials and others might use the research, particularly if it leads to controversial measures such as reintroduction of jaguars or restrictions on grazing, since jaguars - like wolves - eat cattle.
"Sometimes there is a tendency by agencies to do an overkill of management, especially when you're working on species in a very northerly range of the animal," Bray said. "The money would be better spent in more densely populated ranges."
Bray also said he has a huge concern about the use of Homeland Security money for this project, since his group believes the federal agency isn't doing an adequate job of securing the border. If mitigation of environmental impacts is important to the public, the land-management and species-protection agencies should finance the research themselves, he said.
The public interest in this research is likely to be high, said Jeff Humphrey, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, given the buzz that has occurred just since Monday when the Arizona Game and Fish Department announced the most recent confirmed jaguar sighting in Cochise County.
"It's the subject of dinner conversation - hey, a jaguar is back in the United States," Humphrey said. "People love having a connection to the remote, wild land that we are in here."
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Fifteen years after the jaguar was listed as endangered in the U.S., this project will try to determine how often it roams from Mexico to the United States and back, said Melanie Culver, the project's principal investigator and a geneticist for the U.S. Geological Survey and the UA's School of Natural Resources.
Referring to the adult male jaguar photographed in Cochise County Saturday, Culver added that the project will try to learn, "Is this the only one?"(how can it be the only one when there have been 5 other sightings over the past decade--see below parapaphs???)
The research project has brought on a UA professor with a history of mediation work, Kirk Emerson, to reach out to environmental groups, ranchers, private landowners and others in an effort to minimize potential conflicts over the research.
There has long been tension among ranchers, environmentalists and government officials over how to conserve and study jaguars.
The cameras will be placed at 120 locations on public and possibly private lands in mountainous terrain - two cameras per site - and checked regularly, said Lisa Haynes, the research project manager and coordinator of the UA's Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center. They'll be located from the Baboquivari Mountains in south-central Arizona on the west to the Animas Mountains in the "boot heel" of New Mexico on the east.
Funding is from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security(the same agency that is fencing off Mexican Jaguars from their historical USA haunts)
Up to five jaguars have been photographed in the region in the past 15 years. Researchers say the new camera work could help determine if this area actually has a resident jaguar population or if the jaguars that roam here are transient migrants into their range's northern fringe from a larger population in Mexico.
Other possible results of the research include:
• Pinpointing movement corridors for jaguars across the mountainous borderlands region.
• Understanding more about how other wildlife relates to jaguars, and about the region's general biodiversity.
• Helping the federal government determine prime jaguar habitat, and prepare a federal recovery plan for the species.(that should be happening already)
• Learning how much impact the U.S.-Mexican border fence, illegal immigrants, and vehicles and equipment used to pursue immigrants has on the animal.
With last week's sighting being the first confirmed jaguar presence in this country since the March 2009 death of the animal dubbed Macho B, UA researchers say they have no idea what their chances are of detecting more jaguars or again seeing the one just photographed.
The researchers will be picking up on a larger scale where the nonprofit Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project left off in 2009 after the controversy over the capture and death of Macho B abruptly ended the remote camera work the group had been doing in Southern Arizona since the early 2000s.
The group's biologist, Emil McCain, pleaded guilty to trying to capture the jaguar without a permit. His five-year probation forbids him from conducting jaguar research in this country.
The federally financed project will use techniques similar to the detection project as far as cameras go, Haynes said. But this project will not follow McCain's practice of putting jaguar scat at camera sites to lure jaguars, the UA researchers said.
"We want to emphasize that this is a noninvasive technique that we'll use -no capture, no touch, no handling," Haynes said.
But the researchers will employ dogs to look for jaguar scat if cameras capture any of the rare cats, Haynes said. It will be analyzed for DNA to identify the species , said Culver, the geneticist.
Activists for two environmental groups that have pushed hard for jaguar protection were delighted that this study will be done.( great groups, are Sky Alliance and center for Bio Diversity.............but the money should be used for habitat protection and mexico/usa border openings rather than camera traps..........the animals are moving back and forth into the usa and is we allow them protection, a breeding population can possibly begin to take place)
"This type of science is long overdue," said Melanie Emerson, executive director of the Sky Island Alliance, a Tucson conservation group.
"This is clearly nonintrusive, which means that the risks that manifested themselves tragically in Macho B's death will not be there," said Michael Robinson, an activist for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, whose lawsuit forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to agree to designate critical habitat and prepare a recovery plan for the jaguar.
The Arizona Cattle Growers Association is not opposed to the research that UA will be doing, said Patrick Bray, the group's executive vice president. But it is concerned about how federal officials and others might use the research, particularly if it leads to controversial measures such as reintroduction of jaguars or restrictions on grazing, since jaguars - like wolves - eat cattle.
"Sometimes there is a tendency by agencies to do an overkill of management, especially when you're working on species in a very northerly range of the animal," Bray said. "The money would be better spent in more densely populated ranges."
Bray also said he has a huge concern about the use of Homeland Security money for this project, since his group believes the federal agency isn't doing an adequate job of securing the border. If mitigation of environmental impacts is important to the public, the land-management and species-protection agencies should finance the research themselves, he said.
The public interest in this research is likely to be high, said Jeff Humphrey, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, given the buzz that has occurred just since Monday when the Arizona Game and Fish Department announced the most recent confirmed jaguar sighting in Cochise County.
"It's the subject of dinner conversation - hey, a jaguar is back in the United States," Humphrey said. "People love having a connection to the remote, wild land that we are in here."
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Guide describes roaring, powerful jaguar
The big jaguar snarled, roared and clawed, puncturing wounds in the hunting dogs that surrounded him.
Hunting guide Donnie Fenn told a sometimes harrowing tale of his encounter Saturday with the adult male jaguar in a remote canyon in Cochise County, south of Interstate 10.
"It's the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me," said Fenn, who leads hunters to mountain lions with his dogs. "To be honest with you - I got to see it in real life, my daughter got to see it, but I hope never to encounter it again.
"I was nervous, scared, everything. It was just the aggressiveness - the power it had, the snarling. It wasn't a snarl like a lion. It was a roar. I've never heard anything like it."
Fenn was thrilled as well as scared. He had never expected to see such a large, endangered cat so early in his life, at age 32, he said. A lifelong hunter and Benson resident, he runs the mountain lion guide service as a sideline while working full time in an excavating business. He described his one-hour encounter with the jaguar as "a dream come true."
He came away respectful of its power, speed and size."All my dogs took a pretty good beating. They had puncture wounds. ... I got to see it in real life, and I'm glad, but I hope to never encounter it again," he repeated.
Fenn's encounter was the first confirmed sighting of a wild jaguar in the United States since the 2009 death in Arizona of jaguar Macho B, Arizona Game and Fish Department officials said. State biologists returned to the scene and found claw marks in a tree and collected hair samples for possible DNA testing.
Game officials and Fenn declined to specify where the animal was seen Saturday, for its own protection.Wearing a black cowboy hat, Fenn told the following story at a news conference Tuesday held at Game and Fish's Tucson office:
He, his 10-year-old daughter and a friend were in a canyon Saturday, as father took daughter out lion hunting. After they rode on mules for 90 minutes and not seeing lion tracks, one of his older hound dogs started bucking and other dogs began "cold trailing," in which a dog bays at the scent of another animal that had passed by much earlier.
"In a matter of a couple of minutes, the dogs blew out of the canyon and were going fast. I jumped back on my mule and headed up the canyon, and by then the dogs were about three-quarters of a mile from us," Fenn said.
"Then, I was about 200 yards from a tree they were barking under, but I couldn't yet see what was there. I pulled my camera out, zoomed in, and I could tell right away it was a jaguar. It was big and spotted."
Leaving his daughter and friend behind to shoot video of the big cat, he went to call Game and Fish to report the sighting and to get advice on what to do. Once he returned, the jaguar was out of the first tree and running. Fenn chased his dogs as they chased the jaguar. "It was roaring the whole time we were chasing it.
"I've seen a lot of lions treed up and stuff, and I've been in a lot of pretty hairy situations, but I've never experienced something like this. The roaring and growling. It was quite unreal."
As the jaguar clawed his dogs, Fenn, not really sure what to do, tried to pull them away and tie them up. He got all but a couple pups tied and followed the jaguar to a second tree, a mesquite, two miles from the first tree.
He stood 30, then 15 feet from the tree and took 80 to 85 pictures before the jaguar bolted. He and his companions stayed there fewer than 15 minutes - "we didn't want to stay too close, too long.
"I've had countless lions in a tree and in bluffs, and I can remember them all like they were yesterday," Fenn said. "This right here topped it all."
Knowing that only two other men with hounds have treed jaguars in Arizona in recent years, knowing that he was the third, "I still need to wake up. It was a big dream, I guess.
"I've told people for a long time ... I'm out in the field hunting with my dogs two or three days a week ... I kept telling people it was a matter of time, I think I will run into a jaguar. But I thought I would be a lot older than I am."
After telling his story, Fenn and his business partner, Tyler Burkett, showed three pictures of the jaguar on a large screen. One showed him draped around branches of the mesquite. Another showed the jaguar's head, as the animal was in that tree, and a third showed the cat looking downward.
Fenn didn't show his video, and said he didn't plan to immediately release it.
Game and Fish officials asked Fenn for photos, so they can compare its markings with those of other jaguars photographed in Arizona and in northern Sonora. Fenn agreed - if Game and Fish keeps them only for scientific use, department spokesman Mark Hart said.
The department declined those conditions, Hart said.But because the three photos shown at the news conference were themselves photographed by the media, department officials say they believe they can use them for comparisons.
"We have reasonable images. It wasn't so important for us that we get the photos as it was that the photos got out," Hart said. "Now, everybody's got them."A ground rule set for reporters at the Game and Fish news conference was that they were not to ask Fenn his views on the Endangered Species Act or whether he believes jaguars should be captured for research purposes.
"It's the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me," said Fenn, who leads hunters to mountain lions with his dogs. "To be honest with you - I got to see it in real life, my daughter got to see it, but I hope never to encounter it again.
"I was nervous, scared, everything. It was just the aggressiveness - the power it had, the snarling. It wasn't a snarl like a lion. It was a roar. I've never heard anything like it."
Fenn was thrilled as well as scared. He had never expected to see such a large, endangered cat so early in his life, at age 32, he said. A lifelong hunter and Benson resident, he runs the mountain lion guide service as a sideline while working full time in an excavating business. He described his one-hour encounter with the jaguar as "a dream come true."
He came away respectful of its power, speed and size."All my dogs took a pretty good beating. They had puncture wounds. ... I got to see it in real life, and I'm glad, but I hope to never encounter it again," he repeated.
Fenn's encounter was the first confirmed sighting of a wild jaguar in the United States since the 2009 death in Arizona of jaguar Macho B, Arizona Game and Fish Department officials said. State biologists returned to the scene and found claw marks in a tree and collected hair samples for possible DNA testing.
Game officials and Fenn declined to specify where the animal was seen Saturday, for its own protection.Wearing a black cowboy hat, Fenn told the following story at a news conference Tuesday held at Game and Fish's Tucson office:
He, his 10-year-old daughter and a friend were in a canyon Saturday, as father took daughter out lion hunting. After they rode on mules for 90 minutes and not seeing lion tracks, one of his older hound dogs started bucking and other dogs began "cold trailing," in which a dog bays at the scent of another animal that had passed by much earlier.
"In a matter of a couple of minutes, the dogs blew out of the canyon and were going fast. I jumped back on my mule and headed up the canyon, and by then the dogs were about three-quarters of a mile from us," Fenn said.
"Then, I was about 200 yards from a tree they were barking under, but I couldn't yet see what was there. I pulled my camera out, zoomed in, and I could tell right away it was a jaguar. It was big and spotted."
Leaving his daughter and friend behind to shoot video of the big cat, he went to call Game and Fish to report the sighting and to get advice on what to do. Once he returned, the jaguar was out of the first tree and running. Fenn chased his dogs as they chased the jaguar. "It was roaring the whole time we were chasing it.
"I've seen a lot of lions treed up and stuff, and I've been in a lot of pretty hairy situations, but I've never experienced something like this. The roaring and growling. It was quite unreal."
As the jaguar clawed his dogs, Fenn, not really sure what to do, tried to pull them away and tie them up. He got all but a couple pups tied and followed the jaguar to a second tree, a mesquite, two miles from the first tree.
He stood 30, then 15 feet from the tree and took 80 to 85 pictures before the jaguar bolted. He and his companions stayed there fewer than 15 minutes - "we didn't want to stay too close, too long.
"I've had countless lions in a tree and in bluffs, and I can remember them all like they were yesterday," Fenn said. "This right here topped it all."
Knowing that only two other men with hounds have treed jaguars in Arizona in recent years, knowing that he was the third, "I still need to wake up. It was a big dream, I guess.
"I've told people for a long time ... I'm out in the field hunting with my dogs two or three days a week ... I kept telling people it was a matter of time, I think I will run into a jaguar. But I thought I would be a lot older than I am."
After telling his story, Fenn and his business partner, Tyler Burkett, showed three pictures of the jaguar on a large screen. One showed him draped around branches of the mesquite. Another showed the jaguar's head, as the animal was in that tree, and a third showed the cat looking downward.
Fenn didn't show his video, and said he didn't plan to immediately release it.
Game and Fish officials asked Fenn for photos, so they can compare its markings with those of other jaguars photographed in Arizona and in northern Sonora. Fenn agreed - if Game and Fish keeps them only for scientific use, department spokesman Mark Hart said.
The department declined those conditions, Hart said.But because the three photos shown at the news conference were themselves photographed by the media, department officials say they believe they can use them for comparisons.
"We have reasonable images. It wasn't so important for us that we get the photos as it was that the photos got out," Hart said. "Now, everybody's got them."A ground rule set for reporters at the Game and Fish news conference was that they were not to ask Fenn his views on the Endangered Species Act or whether he believes jaguars should be captured for research purposes.
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