The controversial plan to bring jaguars back to the US Came across this Vox article in my morning news thread and thought I'd share it on here. I won't summarize too much as the article itself is very comprehensive and worth reading, but it covers a lot of topics, including: - a plan detailed by studies to establish a 20 million acre protection area for jaguars in Arizona and New Mexico; - the existing federal government plan that protects jaguars in a smaller area south of I-10 next to an existing breeding population in Mexico; - opposition to both plans and generally to having jaguars become re-established in the American Southwest; - how the US government participated in the extirpation of jaguars from the country back in the 19th and 20th centuries; - how some big cat conservationists and government officials spurn the idea of helping reestablish jaguars back in the US and prefer to focus on protecting them in Latin American countries where they still breed; - how Native Americans in the Southwest could play a role in reintroducing breeding jaguars to their ancestral homelands; - how opposition by ranchers and a cultural difference in how urban and rural residents view the fundamental relationship between humans and nature have led to conflict over reestablishing predator species in the US.
I hope these plans do come through and that Jaguars are reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico. It's they're only chance to come back, the cats will not migrate across the border by themselves. (I want to see Grizzly Bears return to the Southwest, as well).