Dr. Bob & Emma mentioned the other day that they were pretty surprised that no one had done the jaguar for their animal projects, and so I decided to do a short little blog post about jaguars. Of course, I don't want to take away the spotlight in case anyone decides to go further into depth with jaguars in their presentations, so I thought I'd just talk a little about jaguar concentration efforts.
The Pantanal is actually home to the highest density of jaguars in the world, which is pretty awesome for use because we might get to see these beautiful creatures in their natural habitats! Jaguars co-habitate the land with cattle, which makes Pantaneiros, particularly cowboys, nervous that they may be a threat to their livelihoods. This overlap has led to cowboys often killing off the jaguars in order to make sure that their cattle are safe, but this has led to the decline of the jaguar population.
Here comes the Pantanal Project, which hopes to protect the habitat of the jaguars as well as foster a culture where cattle ranching is promoted as well as jaguar conservation. Jaguars are a huge draw to the Pantanal, with ecotourism rising in order to see these animals. It is important to emphasize to the cattle ranchers that their livelihoods will not be negatively impacted by the jaguars and cause a cultural shift to increase jaguar populations. Organizations such as Panthera and CENAP have been very important in jaguar conservation efforts and are actively trying to promote protection of jaguars.
Take a look at this website if you're more interested about these efforts! Super cool conservation efforts by Panthera have been launched around the world to protect the various cats of the world. http://www.panthera.org/node/28
- Nicole
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