The first photograph of “El Jefe” was taken by a hunter southeast of Tucson, Arizona, in 2011.
In this photo provided by the University of Arizona and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a male jaguar photographed by motion-detection wildlife cameras in the Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona on April 30, 20215 as part of a Citizen Science jaguar monitoring project conducted by the University of Arizona, in coordination with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The rare northern jaguar’s ability to cross the border suggests that despite increased impediments, there are still open corridors and if they are kept open “it is feasible the jaguar population in the long term,” said Juan Carlos Bravo of the Wildlands Network, one of those groups in the initiative.But some fear for the jaguars’ future.
Hunted in the southwestern United States for rewards offered by the government to promote cattle ranching, they were thought to have disappeared from the U.S. by the end of the 20th century. Jaguar populations are currently concentrated on Mexico’s Pacific coast, southeastern Mexico, Central America and central South America.