At Least 500 Jaguars Have Died Or Had Habitats Destroyed In Amazon Fires
The fires ravaging the Amazon forest in Brazil and Bolivia this year have burned key habitats of at least 500 adult, resident jaguars as of Sept. 17, rendering them dead or homeless, say experts at Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.
“The number of homeless or dead jaguars has undoubtedly increased since Panthera’s estimate was released, and will continue to increase until the rains come,” Esteban Payan, Panthera’s South America regional director, told Mongabay in an email.
To estimate the number of affected jaguars (Panthera onca), Panthera researchers used the total area of jaguar habitat burned, taken from burned areas reported by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the Environmental Secretariat of the Governor’s office of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. They combined this with a jaguar density estimate of 2.5 jaguars per 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) derived from a 2018 study authored by jaguar experts. “Density from jaguar populations in central Amazonia, the work from my Ph.D., was more around 3 animals in 100 square kilometers. So again, this is ‘at least’ that number [500] of jaguars impacted,” Payan said.
In Bolivia in particular, the fires have so far destroyed more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest in one of South America’s key “catscapes,” a region that Panthera has identified as having the highest predicted density of cat species on the continent. Some parts of Bolivia’s catscape are home to eight cat species, including the jaguar, puma (Puma concolor), ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), margay (Leopardus wiedii), oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus), jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi), Geoffrey’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi) and Pampas cat (Leopardus colocola).
Map showing burned areas in Bolivia and wild cat presence. Image courtesy of Panthera.
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https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/panthera-at-least-500-jaguars-lost-their-lives-or-habitat-in-amazon-fires/