Friday, February 05, 2016

Creature Feature: America's Only Known Jaguar



The video captures America's only known living jaguar as it stalks its Santa Rita Mountain home about twenty-five miles south of Tucson. "El Jefe" has been living there for over three years, only one of three or four jaguars spotted north of the border in twenty years. Few people know that the southwest US was once jaguar country, but there has been little concerted effort to reintroduce the predator to its rightful home. The last verified female jaguar was shot and killed in 1963 in Arizona. El Jefe's habitat is now threaten by a copper mining project that will span eight miles of the Santa Rita's 215 square miles. Currently the Rosemont Mine is in the permitting process.