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Conservationists fear threat to jaguar
(Note: It's high time federal agencies start "delineating
occupied habitat" for the REAL endangered species: American
sovereignty, farmers, fisheries, loggers, miners, ranchers, and
property rights aka Freedom. ESA 'poster species' more often than not
serve only to keep many federal employees and bureaucrats/NGO
employees 'employed'.
October 6, 2004
By Thomas J. Baird
tbaird@scsun-news.com or
505-538-5893, ext. 306
Silver City Sun-News
1818 North Silver Street
Silver City, New Mexico 88061
505-538-5893
To submit a Letter to the Editor: editor@scsun-news.com
Despite the settlement last month of a lawsuit filed by two nonprofit
conservation groups against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over
the fate of the endangered jaguar, conservationists still are worried.
Just 10 days after settling the lawsuit, a coalition of 10 Southwestern conservation organizations sent a letter Monday to the Southwestern regional director of the agency requesting formal consultation over the impact of government predator control operations on the wild cat. “Federal predator control was a principal cause of the jaguar’s extermination from the Southwest,” said Michael Robinson, a spokesman for the Grant County-based Center for Biological Diversity. “The Fish and Wildlife Service must ensure that this generation of jaguars gets a better chance at survival than [its] predecessors.” The July 2003 lawsuit filed by the center, along with the Defenders of Wildlife, alleged the agency had failed to write a recovery plan and designate critical habitat for the jaguar. The lawsuit stemmed from the 1997 listing of the big cat as an endangered species in the United States, which itself was a result of a previous lawsuit filed by the center. “We hope the Fish and Wildlife Service will take this agreement seriously and give the jaguar the critical habitat as well as the recovery plan that it needs and has waited for so long,” said Robinson. “We look forward to the day that these beautiful spotted cats can play their natural role in helping keep the balance in Southwestern ecosystems.” In the last decade, jaguars have been photographed north of the U.S.-Mexico border and additional animals have been spotted near and in the Gila National Forest, Robinson added. Three of those reports in the Gila have been accepted by the interagency Jaguar Conservation Team as “Class II,” meaning observations were made by a reliable observer and/or were accompanied by physical evidence. The first of those sightings was made in the Gila north of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness on August 25, 1990, by New Mexico Highlands University biology professor Dr. Gerald Jacobi and his wife, Donna Jacobi, a mammalogist. Jacobi told the Sun-News Tuesday he is certain of what he saw. “That was a long time ago now, but my wife and I both saw it and we're scientists,” he said.
“We were on the highway from Winston to Beaverhead, heading north.
My wife saw it first, off to the right. We looked at it and then it
hightailed south and crossed the road behind us, no more than 30 yards
away.
We were just kind of overwhelmed and really excited about it.”
Jacobi, who is now retired, was working on a project at the time with
the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife as an aquabiologist on
Main Diamond Creek to evaluate food sources for the endangered Gila
trout. He immediately reported the sighting to the New Mexico Game and
Fish Department, but no investigation was undertaken.
A 1998 observation by local rural residents near the San Francisco River in Catron County was also determined to be a Class II sighting, as was a 1999 observation by a Silver City high school biology teacher returning from a hunting trip in the Burro Mountains outside Silver City. In a 1999 “Biological Opinion,” a binding set of established guidelines for Wildlife Services and Animal Damage Control, neck snares and M-44 sodium-cyanide traps within occupied jaguar habitat were prohibited and leghold traps were mandated to be rubber-padded. But the Gila is not within the officially recognized habitat. However, the Biological Opinion also required the federal agencies to develop maps to delineate occupied habitat, Robinson said. “Without these maps, occupied habitat cannot be ascertained,” the coalition wrote in its letter Monday to Fish and Wildlife Service Regional Director H. Dale Hall. “And because these maps do not exist, USDA has failed to adhere to the more restrictive provisions specified for occupied habitat.” Hall was unavailable for comment Tuesday, but Elizabeth Slown, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the jaguar is a species the department is very concerned about. “What we've agreed to, is to take a look at the status of the jaguar,” she said. “We have previously looked at the need for critical habitat and made a decision that it wasn't prudent, based on the low breeding population of jaguars. “Most of their habitat is south of the border,” she added. “But the settlement agreement gives us a date and it will be reevaluated. We’re constantly looking and constantly involved.
We'll basically look at the population and where they've been sighted,
what they're [sic - should be "their"] habitat needs
are, and what the critical elements are that make up their habitat.”
Copyright 2004, Silver City Sun-News
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