Wildlife conservation group hopes to see jaguars reintroduced to southern New Mexico
LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (KVIA) -- Recent sightings of jaguars in Arizona have raised the possibility of the large cats roaming southern New Mexico.
“[The jaguar] is moving throughout these mountain ranges, and probably, he has been in New Mexico," says Ganesh Marin, a doctoral candidate at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona.
He and his colleagues have been tracking a jaguar in the Huachuca Mountains near Tucson since late last year.
It's the eighth documented jaguar in the southwestern United States since 1996, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services.
The last confirmed jaguar sighting in New Mexico, however, was in 2006, and was last photographically documented in 1996 in New Mexico's "bootheel" region.
There's also "little to no evidence" that jaguars ever established a breeding population in the state, according to New Mexico Game & Fish.
However, this is something the Center for Biological Diversity wants to change.
The organization petitioned the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to to reintroduce jaguars in New Mexico and designate more critical habitat in both New Mexico and Arizona back in December of 2022, but was denied last month.
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service denied our request to start a jaguar reintroduction program into the Gila National Forest, which scientists have identified as the best jaguar habitat remaining," says Michael Robinson, a senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Robinson says the reintroduction could have positive impacts on the ecosystem.
"It's an unfortunate response, but sadly it's not a surprising one," says Robinson.
He claims the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service killed jaguars on behalf of the livestock industry back in the 1960's.
However, New Mexico Game & Fish said in a statement to ABC-7 late Wednesday that "there is no evidence that releasing jaguars to New Mexico to try and establish a population would be a return to any kind of natural state."
The statement adds "releasing a large carnivore on the landscape, especially one that is novel to the area, can have cascading impacts on the species lower on the trophic ladder (food chain), which in New Mexico can include many state and federally endangered species that we are trying to recover."
Robinson says despite the petition being denied, people who are interested in seeing jaguars being re-introduced to the Gila Mountains should contact "their local legislators."
