Occasional jaguar sightings in the borderlands between northern Mexico, southern Arizona and New Mexico have elated large carnivore conservationists and struck dread in the hearts of livestock ranchers. Can you imagine hiking through the chaparral and spotting one of these massive cats? Several sightings were recorded in the mid 1990s when dogs used by mountain lion hunters treed the big cats, after a long hiatus of sightings. Brown and Gonzalez’s book, Borderland Jaguars (2001), was one of the first books to gather all the historical accounts of jaguar sightings — and killings — in the southwestern borderlands from the 20th century. {1} The book is divided into three main sections: Natural history; Jaguars and People; and Status and Conservation. What sticks in my mind about the uniqueness of this text was the author’s attention to encounters between people and jaguars. Until you talk to the people living in conflict with large predators, it is extremely difficult to grasp the day-to-day challenges that thwart conservation efforts, and it is extremely difficult to craft effective conservation plans. Martin Nie said, “Conservation problems are, at their root, people problems.” {2} I whole-heartedly agree.
They lead the book with an anecdote about a rancher hunting mountain lions in the 1990s in the Baboquivari Mountains in Arizona when his dogs treed an unexpected quarry — a male jaguar. The rancher photographed the animal before it escaped and retreated to Mexico, and the authors point out that it was remarkable the animal lived, because that would not have been the case in the near past. The incident, verified indisputably by photographs, raised awareness that jaguars may be returning to the southwestern landscape after several decades of absence. After this heartening, hopeful introduction, the authors launch into a retrospective look at how borderlands jaguars fared in the southwest, as they tried in vain to expand their range northward at a time when American settlers were claiming the land. What follows is a grim tale of isolated killings, enough to fill 12.5 pages in long and desperate numeric table documenting known reports of jaguars killed or captured in the southwest, and in Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico.
They detail the jaguars natural history in the descriptive terms of scientists (both authors are researchers), and I was particularly fascinated with their range maps of current, historic and fossil range distribution on pages 30 and 31. Ten thousand year-old jaguar fossils have been found as far north as northern California, stretching eastward across the continent to southern Virginia. Fossil sites cluster around Tennessee (5), Florida (10) and central Texas (3). But 100,000 year old jaguar fossils have been unearthed even farther north — in the southeastern corner of Washington State, all the way east to southern Pennsylvania. In this context, the reduction of the jaguars’ modern range to coastal ribbons in Central America dangling tenuously down into larger pools of habitat across northern South America reads starkly.
They present detailed maps of jaguars killed between 1900-2000, with different symbols representing 25-year quartiles (pg. 36- 37). If you take your time with this map, a clear picture emerges of a habitat shift southward. From 1900-1925, approximately 23 jaguars were killed in Arizona (difficult to quantify as many symbols overlap), but between 1976 and 2000, only 3 were killed and the locations were all down around the southern border with Mexico and the New Mexico state line. (By comparison, six were killed in New Mexico in 1900-1925, and none after 1950.) The authors assume that at least for the first 75 years of the 20th century, nearly every jaguar that was sighted was hunted down and killed, or there was an attempt to. It was the prevailing attitude at the time.
After wrapping up their descriptive natural history, the authors survey instances of jaguars in art, literature and myth, and then they turn their attention to historical records and photographs of jaguars killed for their skins, to protect livestock, or killed from a perceived need to protect human safety. Page after page reveals accounts of dead borderlands jaguars, jaguar hides, and jaguars mounted on living room walls. The authors state that though piecemeal killing of jaguars in Mexico occurred regularly, the real death knell to jaguars was the homesteaders who settled Arizona and New Mexico “who were then waging a battle with predators in an effort to reduce losses to their livestock” (pg. 88). The next 75 pages take the reader through sobering accounts of ranchers and homesteaders killing jaguars, and sportsmen and hunters killing jaguars. Some were trapped, some treed with hunting dogs, and some were simply stumbled upon and shot on sight. For example, they recount the story of “two-teenaged duck hunters” just a few miles from the Mexican border in 1971 who snuck up on a water hole and were surprised by a male jaguar. “Naturall, they shot it,” the authors wrote (pg. 98).
Two things struck me about this anecdote: 1.) the jaguar was male; and 2.) the boys’ reaction. Biologically speaking, the fact that many of the borderland jaguars have been documented as male indicates that they are likely dispersers seeking new territories and new mates. Socially, the anecdote reveals a growing dichotomy in the nation in the second half of the 20th century where growing conservation values conflicted with older attitudes, ones prejudiced against wild predators. In this latter view, large carnivores were not valued for their relationship to other species in the trophic web, rather, they were feared and villified for symbolizing an entity that threatened human safety and prosperity.
Mexico has protected jaguars since 1986. Nevertheless, the authors reasoned that if there were still large cats in northern Mexico (Sonora), that they may be preying upon livestock and people may in turn still be killing them. So they decided to visit the “old hunting grounds” of an American that had attempted to lead guided jaguar hunting tours, (back when hunting them was still legal). They worked with livestock officials who coordinate ranching on a defined municipal basis within the state of Sonora to pin-point areas where ranchers were likely to have jaguar problems; and they counted as true only reports where they could find a voucher specimen (a pelt, a skull, teeth, claws or a photograph… something real to prove the person’s story). In a sad truth, they were more successful than they anticipated. Their work aided U.S. researchers in mapping out the known ranges of the northernmost jaguar population in Sonora, Mexico. This area also overlaps with nearly continuous rangeland for cattle, and bovines are now considered a regular part of the jaguars prey, delineating a societal conservation conflict. The authors also include first-person anecdotal accounts of people hunting jaguars.
Sadly, the last section of the book (Status and Conservation) is a mere seven pages long. The brevity is a contrast to the 66 pages expended on its natural history, and the 69 expended on jaguars and people. Although I was disappointed in the shortness, I appreciated the honesty of their statement that “cattle ranching and jaguars are currently incompatible” (pg. 144) and that a jaguar preserve was a pipe dream.
I couldn’t help but feel, reading this book, as if the authors were documenting the local extinction of jaguars from the United States with the cold knowledge that there were “plenty” in South America. If you are interested in the status of jaguar conservation in South and Central America, then I recommend reading this National Geographic feature on the Path of the Jaguar meta-corridor project, organized by Alan Rabinowitz (story by Mel White).
NOTES:
{1} Brown, David E., and Carlos Lopez Gonzalez. 2001. Borderland Jaguars (Tigres de la Frontera). The University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City.
{2} Nie, M. 2001. The sociopolitical dimensions of wolf management and restoration in the United States. Human Ecology Review. 8: 1-12.
3 thoughts on “(Review) Borderland Jaguars, by David Brown and Carlos Lopez Gonzalez”
alex
Is this book available in ordinary bookstores? if not, where can I get a copy?
DeLene
Hi Alex, I picked my copy up in a visitor’s center at a state park in New Mexico… it was published by the Univ. of Utah Press. Just did a quick search and I found it available on Amazon.com ($14), and Barnes & Noble.com ($22) — both in paperback. If you want to buy from a local store, you can ask them to order it. Also check out this page, which has a few buying options: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL8085821M/Borderland_Jaguars. Best of luck and happy reading, DeLene.
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