El Jefe (jaguar)
El Jefe is a male jaguar first recorded in Arizona in November 2011[1] and living in the Santa Rita Mountains. As of March 2016, it is the only jaguar currently known to live in the United States. His name, which means The Bosswin Spanish,as chosen by students of the Felizardo Valencia Middle School of Tucson, in a contest organized by the non-profit conservation group Center for Biological Diversity.
First sighting
El Jefe was first sighted by cougar hunter and guide Donnie Fenn, along with his 10 year-old daughter, in the Whetstone Mountains on Saturday, November 19 2011. His hunting dogs chased the animal until it climbed a tree, at which point he took several pictures of it and left to call state wildlife officials. In a news conference[2] organized by the Arizona Game and Fish Department the following Tuesday, he stated that the jaguar, an adult male, climbed down the tree and was chased up a second tree at which point, and after it had injured some of the dogs in its retreat, Fenn pulled them away, and left the scene. The pictures represent the first evidence of the existence of a wild jaguar in the United States since the death of Macho B in 2009. Several news outlets ran the photos with an article, but a video taken at the scene is not publicly available.
Appearance in the Santa Rita Mountains
In December 20 2012 the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced that pictures from a jaguar taken in late November of that year at the Santa Rita Mountains using camera-traps, belonged to the same individual photographed by Fenn one year earlier. The camera-traps were set by the Jaguar Survey and Monitoring Project an initiative led by the University of Arizona. Individual jaguars can be identified by their unique spot patterns, allowing researchers to confirm it was the same adult male.
Continued monitoring of El Jefe
Since the emergence of the pictures of El Jefe in 2012 several new pictures and some videos have been released by agencies and groups working in the area. An edited video with shots form different days gained much attention in the news when it was released by the organization CATalyst.
Significance and controversial development projects
El Jefe is significant as it represents the only jaguar currently living in the United States, where they once were distributed throughout the southwest. The US Fish and Wildlife Service was successfully sued by several conservation groups to produce a Species Recovery Plan and designate Critical Habitat for jaguars, and has since drafted an area that includes the Santa Rita mountains as a Critical habitat for the species recovery in the United States.
The appearance of El Jefe in the Santa Rita Mountains prompted several groups to increase their opposition of the Rosemont Copper mining project still in the permitting process.
The housing project Villages at Vigneto is also being contested for its environmental impact, and damage to jaguar's critical habitat has been mentioned as one of the potential effects[3]
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/us-jaguar-el-jefe-captured-video-36709093
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/wildlife-monitoring-cameras-click-jaguar-and-ocelot-photos
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/11/jaguar-spotted-southern-arizona-macho-b.html
- ^ Arizona Game and Fish Department (21 11 2011). "Game and Fish confirms report of jaguar in southern Arizona". Arizona Game and Fish Department Media web page. Retrieved 25 3 2016.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|access-date=and|date=(help) - ^ Davis, Tony (22 11 2011). "Guide describes roaring, powerful jaguar". Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved 26 3 2016.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|access-date=and|date=(help) - ^ Bregel, Emily (3 14 2016). "Environmentalists moving to sue federal agencies over Vigneto development". Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved 3 26 2016.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|access-date=and|date=(help)