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Save a Jaguar - Pantanal Part III
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Because the data show that ranches with high productivity and low cattle mortality rarely see jaguar predation, one of the best ways to save wild jaguars is to help ranchers take better care of their domestic animals. One study found that moving a test herd farther from the forest edge, where jaguars prowl, dropped attacks by more than half. Other predation defenses employed in the Pantanal include fences that keep cattle out of riverside forests, dogs trained to protect herds, and water buffaloes, which can be raised in place of or alongside cattle. The large-horned buffaloes are better able to repel jaguars than beef cattle. All these strategies make sense, Carolina Coelho acknowledges, but their success depends on local conditions. Her farm is trying out a small herd of buffalo, but, she noted, “In Brazil, buffaloes are hard to sell, and this is not a solution to be used widely.”
Howard Quigley, director of Western Hemisphere programs for the New York-based nonprofit Panthera, pointed to another Pantanal lodge that has successfully blended ecotourism and ranching — Caiman Ecological Refuge, where he had worked on his doctoral thesis about jaguars. Caiman’s owners set aside a permanent nature reserve, where cattle can’t go, “forming core habitat for conservation,” Quigley said in a phone interview.
Some conservation groups have promoted another jaguar-protection strategy: paying ranchers for livestock lost to jaguar predation, a technique long practiced by Defenders of Wildlife with wolves reintroduced to the American West. The results with jaguars have been mixed in South America, though, with ranchers complaining that the payments take too long and biologists worrying that they don’t amount to long-term solutions. “There are currently no effective compensation programs for lost cattle,” Coelho said. “We think it would be better if the government gave tax breaks to farmers who are jaguar friendly and could prove loss.” The best way to encourage ranchers to live in harmony with jaguars, Quigley argues, is to suggest changes that require little upfront investment. “You can’t just come in and tell people how to run their ranch,” he cautioned. “You can do what I call ‘leaning across the fence’ dispersal of information. Say, ‘You know, I tried that thing that scientist talked about, and I’m getting better results and have no jaguar predation.’” For example, Panthera supplies ranchers with animal vaccines, which help make herds less attractive to jaguars by keeping them healthy. “There’s some level of depredation that a rancher in the Pantanal has to accept,” Quigley says. “But we’re trying to reduce that to a point where it’s insignificant.”
A few years ago, Panthera hired a Venezuelan veterinarian, Rafael Hoogesteijn, who has 25 years of experience working with jaguars and ranchers and is setting up a model ranch for Panthera in the north Pantanal. He has also helped the conservation group prepare pamphlets, in multiple languages, that outline jaguar-friendly ranching practices. Panthera distributes the literature to ranchers in hot spots throughout the big cat’s range, in hopes of securing a more or less continuous corridor where the cats can roam.
Panthera hopes to convince palm tree and other plantation owners to allow jaguars safe passage through their lands. “Connectivity is important, especially with the threat of climate change,” Quigley said. “If we can assure that jaguars can pass through a human-dominated landscape to another park or reserve, that provides an umbrella for biodiversity conservation.”
Lessons learned in the Pantanal are applicable to other parts of the jaguar’s range, including in the Sonoran Desert in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Ranching is an important part of the Sonoran ecosystem, and, Quigley says, many of the same rules may apply there – especially the need to keep cattle out of the forested areas that jaguars frequent.
At Fazenda San Francisco, Henrique Concone told us about another big male jaguar that guests occasionally glimpse: “Orelha,” easily identifiable by the scar on his right ear. (Orelha means ear in Portuguese.) Concone also spoke of rare “black panthers,” jaguars with melanism that darkens their glossy coats. They are a major draw for ecotourists.
After the night safari, we sipped the strong Brazilian rum-based drinks called caipirinhas and marveled at each other’s photos. The mood was electric. We had seen a jaguar.
Picture by Brian Clark Howard - A ranch hand ropes a calf on the Fazenda San Francisco.