In the grasslands of Yagul, in the central valleys of southern Mexico’s Oaxaca state, a jaguar makes its way through the bushes. It stops suddenly, lowering its head and sharpening its gaze, stalking. With its eyes on its target, it stealthily pounces on it. Just a short run and a jump before the jaguar’s prey is in its jaws.

It sounds like a hunting scene from the wild, but this one is an exercise planned by a team of biologists, veterinarians and ethnologists. The prey isn’t a live animal, but a jute sack stuffed with chicken meat, strung from the end of a pole.

 
The exercise is meant to encourage the jaguar to relearn behavior from its former life in the wild: using its sense of smell to locate its target, its claws and muscles to climb the pole, and its bite and weight to break the rope that ties the chicken-stuffed bag together. Only in this way can it access its prize.

“This type of exercise keeps the jaguars active and reduces the impact of captivity and a sedentary lifestyle, which can cause stress and obesity,” says Víctor Rosas Cosío, a jaguar expert and project director of the Yaguar Xoo sanctuary, located 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the city of Oaxaca, the state capital.

For now, the sole aim of the exercise is to keep Balam healthy. This young jaguar (Panthera onca) was captured as a cub near the town of Matías Romero in Oaxaca; after a year and a half in a small cage, it was seized by Mexico’s environmental authorities and taken to the Yaguar Xoo sanctuary.

One of the sanctuary’s objectives is to prepare various wildcat species to return to their natural habitats, which it does through a specially designed program.

The idea of humans teaching jaguars to behave like jaguars may seem unusual, but it’s part of a conservation trend in which seized animals that have been victims of wildlife trafficking or were born in captivity are reintroduced back into their natural habitat. Reintroduction programs can be found across the world for species ranging from frogs and orangutans, to lions, axolotls and even fish.

In Mexico, Rosas Cosío and a team of scientists from various areas have successfully released two jaguars, and are currently working to reintroduce two other jaguars and three pumas (Puma concolor).

To support this commitment, the Jaguares en la Selva Foundation (Jaguars in the Wild), which Rosas Cosío chairs, was created in 2015. Through a collaboration agreement, the foundation carries out its activities at the facilities of the Xoo Jaguar sanctuary, a space originally opened in 2000 to care for seized wild animals.

Wildlife simulators

At the start of the 20th century, there were nearly 40,000 jaguars roaming across Mexico; today, that number is down to just 4,800. Poaching, retaliatory killings for livestock deaths, and the expansion of agriculture and livestock pasture into forest areas are responsible driving a nearly 88% decline in the big cat’s population.

Historically, jaguars could be found throughout Mexico’s mountains and Atlantic and Pacific coasts, from Chiapas in the very south and Quintana Roo in the east, to Sonora in the north and Tamaulipas in the northeast. They also occurred in a corridor along the Neovolcanic Axis, the mountain range that runs across the center of the country. Although this distribution has largely persisted, population and habitat loss have led to a 40% decrease in the jaguar’s territory and fragmented what remains, isolating populations and compromising their genetic diversity, among other things.

“A reintroduction strategy like the one we developed here has the potential to repopulate or strengthen jaguar populations in places where there are very few left,” Rosas Cosío says, referring to northern Mexico where the agriculture and livestock industries have contributed to a considerable decrease in wildcat populations.

To teach the jaguars to behave like jaguars, the sanctuary has two wildlife simulators: areas deliberately isolated from any human contact that recreate as best as possible all the conditions of the habitat into which the jaguars will be reintroduced.

The simulators are surrounded by fences almost 5 meters (16 feet) high, which are covered in black plastic to prevent those inside seeing out, and those outside seeing in. They enclose landscapes of burrows and hills, with speakers broadcasting artificial sounds meant to mimic those heard in the animals’ original habitat. Biologists in charge of the project supply live prey similar to the species that jaguars hunt for food in the wild, such as rabbits, peccaries and white-tailed deer.

In cycles that can last from one to four years, depending on factors such as age, physical condition and behavior, the jaguars first become familiar with the presence of other living animals and gradually develop a predator-prey relationship with them. These lessons show everything, from jaguars being intimidated by a peccary or injured by a deer’s kick.

“The rewilding program addresses the behavioral, physical and cognitive areas of jaguars,” says biologist Roberto Velásquez. “In this way, we build knowledge from the bottom up, confront hypotheses, and break patterns through trial and error.”

A team of scientists monitors the animals’ rewilding from hidden windows at strategic points in the simulator or from video surveillance cameras around its perimeter. At just 0.5-0.6 hectares (1.2-1.5 acres), these enclosures are a tiny fraction of the 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres) that a male jaguar can call its territory, but they do resemble the breeding areas that the big cats may have in the wild.

The admission criteria for a jaguar to enter the wildlife simulator is very rigorous, and not every animal is a candidate for rewilding and release. For example, some jaguars have lost their fangs or are too old to hunt, which means they wouldn’t survive in the wild. Others that were born in captivity have high levels of inbreeding, meaning they’re the result of mating between related jaguars, and therefore have reduced genetic variability, making them susceptible to congenital diseases that would disadvantage them in the wild.

In collaboration with the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the University of Sierra Juárez, candidate jaguars’ DNA is analyzed, with jaguars that have the same genetic profile as Mexico’s native populations selected for the reintroduction program.

Celestún Petén and Nicté Ha, a conservation milestone

While the Yaguar Xoo sanctuary has welcomed and housed wildcats since its creation in 2000, its contributions to conservation science were modest in its first 15 years. The sanctuary served primarily as a consignment center for animals seized by PROFEPA, Mexico’s highest authority for wildlife protection. That meant the sanctuary took in not just jaguars, but also lions, tigers and pumas from circuses, zoos or homes where they’d been kept as pets.

Over the years, the sanctuary’s managers decided to focus on jaguars, but today it still houses two African lions (Panthera leo), a Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris), a bobcat (Lynx rufus), an oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus) and an ocelot (Leopardus pardalis). These animals allow the sanctuary to teach visitors the differences between the world’s wildcats.

In October 2016, by then under the leadership of Jaguares en la Selva, the sanctuary took in two jaguars that represented a unique opportunity. Celestún Petén and Nicté Ha were two female cubs found a few days after being born near pastureland in the town of Centauros del Norte, in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Campeche state.

Mexico’s national parks authority, CONANP, placed the cubs in the custody of Jaguares en la Selva, which transferred them to its facilities in Oaxaca. The organization launched a work plan that culminated in 2021 with the reintroduction of both animals into the jungles of Quintana Roo.

The successful release of these jaguars, rescued at a young age, marked a milestone, and caught the attention of researchers both inside and outside Mexico. “It was an unusual case because the jaguars were very small, so we had to change our mindset about what could and couldn’t be done, and these young jaguars set a precedent,” says Andrea Reyes, who’s responsible for Jaguares en la Selva’s audiovisual documentation.

The process wasn’t easy. Rosas Cosío and his team had to create protocols, sometimes from scratch, for the five stages into which they divided the work with the jaguars: motherhood, weaning, development, rehabilitation, and release. The first was the most critical, as the cubs were found dehydrated and without their mother.

The solution was to create a prop mother: a plush pillow printed with jaguar patterns in which bottles were hidden, leaving only the teats sticking out like nipples. For added realism, they rubbed the pillow on the body of an adult jaguar to capture some of its scent.

During these five stages, the process was gradual and careful. First, Celestún Petén and Nicté Ha were presented with meat in the way that their biological mother would provide it to them. Then, they were given dead, but not skinned, animals, so that they would learn to work for their food. After four months came a big change, with the introduction of live animals, which continued until they reached the big question of whether they would be able to live in the wild: hunting and killing (by biting) large animals.

Following their graduation from the jaguar school in Oaxaca, as the entire world faced the COVID-19 pandemic, the jaguars were transported back to the Yucatán Peninsula aboard a Mexican Navy plane in November 2020. They remained there for four months within a simulator built inside the habit, before being successfully released in March 2021 after a positive medical and health evaluation.

Using tracking collars, the Jaguares en la Selva technical team documented both jaguars first moving together before separating; afterward, both crossed rural and paved roads, including into the state of Yucatán, before returning to Quintana Roo. They also entered and left the protected natural area of Yum Balam.

“Currently, the only way to know if they are still alive is through photos from camera traps placed in areas close to the release site,” Reyes says. The team stopped monitoring the two jaguars in July 2021, and their collars were released through an automated mechanism. To date, the organization doesn’t have any photos of the jaguars from camera traps.

Lessons learnt from Grandfather Jaguar

The domain of the top feline predator in the Americas ranges from Arizona and New Mexico in the U.S. to northern Argentina. Along the way, it takes in tropical areas at sea level, valleys and deserts, and pine-oak forests at 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above sea level. Jaguars run, swim, and climb trees, and eat everything from rodents to fish and crocodiles.

They help create a healthy ecosystem; as the apex predator in the food chain, jaguars keep prey populations under control that would otherwise become a problem for other animals or plant species if allowed to flourish unchecked.

For many Indigenous peoples across the Americas, the jaguar is imbedded in their mythology and is a deity. It forms a fundamental part of both their culture and their worldview, something that’s very clear in Oaxaca, the state with the greatest biological and ethnic diversity in Mexico.

Here, one particular story has left a mark on jaguar conservation work, combining science, culture and mysticism: the story of the “jaguar of light.”

It was 2004, and the Indigenous Chinantec community of Cristo Rey La Selva, in the Chinantla region, had just lost 40 head of cattle to a single jaguar. The community decided at an assembly that the jaguar needed to be eliminated. So a group from the community set out to kill it one night. But when they found the jaguar, the story goes, they were blinded by a light emanating from it, and so threw down their weapons and fled. When they reported what had happened to the assembly, the elders concluded that it must have been Grandfather Jaguar, a sacred animal that, according to myth, had accompanied the community’s founder centuries ago, and therefore could not be killed.

As a result, they changed their strategy and decided to catch the jaguar, which they achieved using a trap. A few days later, with the jaguar secured in a cage, the community struck a deal with PROFEPA, the wildlife conservation agency, to place the animal in the care of the jaguar sanctuary run by Víctor Rosas Vigil, Víctor Rosas Cosío’s father.

At the sanctuary, researchers and officials came to see the jaguar, but it was unsociable and didn’t react well to visitors, throwing itself against the mesh fencing and hurting its face. In the end, the community of Cristo Rey La Selva asked for the jaguar to be returned to them. One of their men had fallen ill during the jaguar’s absence and they said they feared the jaguar must have taken his soul and therefore needed to be returned.

On Dec. 17, 2005, with the support of scientists and officials, the jaguar was reintroduced into the forests of Chinantla where it was found. It had lain in captivity for 14 months. The locals received it back with a ritual that involved candles and flowers, asking the jaguar to remain in the forest and not harm their cattle. It was released near the Cajonos River, with a tracking collar that recorded its movements following his release. Not only did the jaguar’s return to the Chinantec community mark the birth of a new legend, but it created a biocultural route for jaguar conservation researchers in Oaxaca to look at the deep interconnection between ecosystems and Indigenous peoples.

“Although there was already a previous scientific record, the jaguar of light was very significant in media terms and not only reflected the presence of jaguars in Oaxaca, but also the importance and role that local communities were playing in their conservation, as well as the jaguar’s popularity and biocultural aspects,” says biologist Fernando Mondragón, who was a technical adviser to the Chinantec community on conservation issues during the process of relocating Grandfather Jaguar.

New generation, new challenges

Cachicamo and Lamanai are a brother and sister currently in the process of getting reintroduced into the wild. Both jaguars arrived at the sanctuary on March 22, 2020, just days after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. As with virtually everything after this point, plans for their reeducation and release were immediately disrupted, including funding.

To date, the Mexican government still hasn’t provided any support for their release and relocation, so the now 4-year-old jaguar siblings remain in the wildlife simulator more for scientific documentation purposes than in preparation for their release.

It takes 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of meat a day to feed each of the 15 adult jaguars in the sanctuary. For wild prey, like a live deer for the wildlife simulators, it can cost up to 20,000 pesos ($1,000) — on top of getting one transported from an environmental management unit with official certification. This financial pressure has forced Rosas Cosío and his team to auction art donated by local artists (including the famous master Francisco Toledo) to raise funds for their work.

Three pumas, two females and one male, that arrived at the sanctuary in April 2022 and now live in one of the wildlife simulators, have been luckier. That same year, the board of directors of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s soccer team, known as the Pumas, granted financial support for them, ensuring their return to the wild. The pumas — Lontla, Sama and Dasai, all 2 years old — are expected to return to their natural habitat in the Huasteca region of Hidalgo state, in central Mexico, sometime in 2025.

Jaguares en la Selva is part of the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation, and receives support from businesses, artists and the scientific community both within and outside Oaxaca. Yet despite its successes and recognition, it continues to face major problems in carrying out its work.

 
For example, one night in October 2023, unidentified individuals broke into the sanctuary’s facilities and stole everything from handicrafts to scientific instruments, including the screens that scientists used to monitor the wildlife simulators. They also set fire to the facilities when they left, reducing them to ashes.

“Of course this affects us as well as the animals, which do not belong to us, but the country,” Rosas Cosío says.

The keys to jaguar conservation

Juan Pablo Esparza, a researcher at the University of Guadalajara and an expert in feline ecology and conservation, recognizes the importance of “pioneering exercises” carried out by organizations such as Jaguares en la Selva for the reintroduction of these animals into the wild. However, he says there needs to be more emphasis on addressing the main causes for the wildcats needing to be rescued and rehabilitated in the first place: habitat loss and clashes with humans.

“Often, the problem is not that we lack jaguars, but that their habitats are being destroyed and they encounter conflicts with humans. We need social conditions so that humans can coexist with them,” says Esparza, adding that rewilding and reintroduction nevertheless have a great positive social impact by putting jaguars in the public eye, which can change attitudes.

More than 6,000 km (3,700 mi) from Oaxaca, in the Brazilian Pantanal, Paul Raad, a veterinarian and researcher at São Paulo State University, agrees with Esparza. For Raad, who works in the part of the world with the highest concentration of jaguars, it’s clear that farmers won’t stop killing the big cats if they don’t have financial support to implement measures to protect their livestock.

As coordinator of the human-wildlife coexistence project for the organization Ampara Animal, working in Pousada Piuval, Raad has found that electric fences can reduce jaguar-related livestock deaths by 95%.

“Our biggest challenge now is to get a law passed that supports us by offering farmers incentives that are pro-jaguar because pro jaguar means pro-health,” Raad tells Mongabay Latam by phone. “As a veterinarian, my first argument is truer than ever after the COVID-19 pandemic: jaguars are essential in ecosystems as they control species that are potential hosts of parasites and vectors, meaning jaguars can help control possible new pandemics.”

Back in Oaxaca, in the Chinantla region, the relationship between humans and jaguars is reflected in each of the six communities that make up the Committee on Natural Resources of Upper Chinantla (CORENCHI), where jaguars feature in cloud forest conservation projects. The farmers in Chinantla say they owe a lot to the jaguars, as they recognize that they control “harmful” species that eat their crops, such as badgers, lowland pacas, peccaries or Central American red brocket.

Mondragón, the biologist advising the Indigenous community and director of the civil socity organization Geoconservación, highlights how these communities hold competitions for the best photos and videos of jaguars captured with camera traps. All of this activity has fostered a sense of belonging and pride in the presence of jaguars, he says.

It’s no coincidence that Chinantla forms part of a corridor that’s home to some of the densest jaguar populations in Mexico.

“Beyond biological monitoring, there is a need to document more of the relationship that jaguars have with humans in the positive, biocultural sense, the lessons that they are teaching them and the processes that many communities have in conserving their forests through jaguar conservation,” Mondragón says.

This positive relationship with jaguars, which isn’t yet widely known, is what encourages several biologists, including Domingo Mendoza, a member of the scientific team working at the sanctuary.

Mendoza is so close to the rescued jaguars that he knows each of their personalities and habits, as well as their progress in learning the skills that will eventually allow them to return to the wild.

In this school sanctuary, humans also acquire new knowledge. Mendoza sums it up with enthusiasm: “We are fortunate in that we can also learn from these animals, and that we are part of a generation that is changing the way humans relate to them. It’s a very interesting moment in the history of this relationship.”

 
Banner image: Celestún Petén and Nicté Ha, two jaguars that were reintroduced into their natural habitat in 2021. Image courtesy of Andrea Reyes/Jaguars in the Wild Foundation.

This story was first published here in Spanish on April 8, 2024.

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Alexandrapopescu Editor

Sydney Sims Translator

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