PrimalNature.org: Big Wilderness
Jaguars and the Sky Islands
The Wildlands Project, Naturalia, A.C., and the Northern Jaguar Project announced in February 2008 that they have acquired 35,000 acres of critical jaguar habitat in Northern Mexico. The purchase is the last step in a multi-year project to create a seventy-square-mile Northern Jaguar Preserve. The preserve protects a core population of more than one hundred jaguars, plus cougars, otters, bald eagles, military macaws, and other species.
The Jaguar Preserve is located in the Sky Islands region of southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northern Mexico, where four ecoregions meet: the temperate Rocky Mountains on the north, the subtropical Sierra Madre Occidental to the south, the lower-elevation Sonoran Desert to the west, and the higher-elevation Chihuahuan Desert to the east. The variations in elevation, temperature, and humidity make possible a wide range of habitats, which support a rich wildlife. In the words of the Wildlands Project, "The region is home to 4000 plant species, more than half of all the breeding birds in North America, and one of the world's most diverse populations of reptiles and mammals."
Nevertheless, over the last hundred years, the region has undergone loss of species, fragmentation due to construction of roads and buildings, and degradation of watersheds. The Wildlands Project and its regional partners are working to reverse this process. They have created a Sky Islands Wildlands Network Conservation Plan, which envisions the connection of core wildlands areas by means of wildlife corridors to build a network that allows for the return of species. A network of organizations and individuals of varied backgrounds is now working to implement the Network Conservation Plan. The Northern Jaguar Preserve is one of the fruits of their work.
The network hopes to restore jaguars to their original range. However, U.S. plans to construct seven miles of border wall across a known jaguar corridor near Sasabe, Arizona, will, if realized, put an end to this plan. The corridor links the Baboquivari Mountain complex/Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in the United States with the northernmost jaguar breeding grounds in Sonora, Mexico, some 120 miles to the southeast. Jaguars once resided in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana. Around the turn of the century hunters exterminated them from the United States. Now the jaguars are gradually repopulating their former range in this country. Construction of the border wall will block their movement.
In 2007 the U.S. Border Patrol announced that a final Environmental Assessment for construction of the seven miles had found "no significant impact" on the ecology of the region. The assessment was carried out without a chance for public comment and did not consider replacing the proposed wall with virtual technologies. Legislation that would make possible protection of the jaguars is pending in the U.S. Congress.
Sadly, the U.S. Supreme Court refused in June, 2008, to consider a petition filed by Defenders of Wildlfe and the Sierra Club contending that waivers invoked by Homeland Security Michael Chertoff under the REAL ID Act of 2005 to allow him to complete the fence by December 31 give "unbounded authority" to the executive branch and are thus unconstitutional.
Update--January 8, 2009
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has started to construct a road within the 18,500-acre, federally designated Otay Mountain Wilderness Area on the United States-Mexico border east of Sand Diego. Chertoff waived the Wilderness Act in April 2008 under the REAL ID Act to facilitate construction of the border wall. Construction will require extensive grading and leveling and the removal of 530,000 cubic meters of rock, inside and outside the Wilderness Area. The land is too rugged to require a wall to stop human intruders. For a press release by Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society, and the Wildlands Network with more details, click here.
Update--January 26, 2010
As the result of a judge's order that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) must comply with the requirements of the Endangered Species Act in regard to critical habitat designation and recovery planning for jaguars, the agency has announced that it will produce the habitat designation map by January 2011 and will begin work on the recovery planning process. Previously the agency had refused to undertake these processes.
The Wildlands Network and its partners, who helped to bring about this change on the part of FWS, are also working to maintain unfragmented wildlife linkages across the U.S.-Mexico Border. They sponsored Border Ecological Symposiums over the past four years to identify cross-border jaguar corridors and have provided the Arizona Game and Fish Department with detailed GIS mapping of borderlands jaguar movement corridors [Wildlands Network News Flash!,1/15/10]. See http://www.wildlandsnetwork.org for more information.