- The successful reintroduction of a young male jaguar into the Amazon Rainforest last year, following his rescue from wildfires, has highlighted the persistent threats to the species across its range.
- While there have been other successful jaguar reintroductions in Brazil, especially in the Pantanal wetlands, the species faces challenges in all Brazilian biomes—from wildfires and vehicle strikes, to retaliatory killings and poaching for body parts coveted in the Asian market.
- Jaguar reintroduction programs also face challenges, including governmental bureaucracy and the high costs involved from rescue to release, which can run as high as $180,000 per animal.
In the space of six months, Xamã the jaguar had crisscrossed more than 14,000 hectares of the Amazon Rainforest, or about 35,000 acres — an area a tenth the size of Rio de Janeiro. During that time, he avoided open areas and farms. Xamã may look like any of the thousands of other jaguars (Panthera onca) found in the Amazon, but there’s something special about him. Aside from the GPS tracking collar around his neck, Xamã is a survivor, with a back story that reveals much about the threats that the largest cat in the Americas faces today.
Xamã was about 2 months old when he was found in a rural part of Sinop municipality in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. This region is part of the “arc of deforestation” carving through the Amazon, and is frequently hit with wildfires. It’s thought his mother may have been lost in the wildfire, or else separated from her cub while fleeing the flames.
When he was found, Xamã weighed just over 10 kilograms (22 pounds). He was malnourished and dehydrated, and taken to the veterinary hospital at the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT). The primary care workers there realized that, although he was debilitated, he was in good health. And despite all that he had gone through, he maintained his natural instincts as a wild animal — meaning it might be possible to return him to his natural habitat.
Xamã’s rescue drew the attention of the conservation NGO World Animal Protection, which saw the situation as an opportunity to use his story to alert Brazilians to the impact of agricultural expansion on wildlife.
“Because he was an animal who had had very little contact with humans, he was a good candidate for reintroduction,” says biologist Júlia Trevisan, WAP’s wildlife coordinator. “Soon we were working together with our partners to identify who would be able to carry out his rehabilitation.”
The organization chosen for the task was Onçafari, an internationally renowned player in the reintroduction of jaguars. They were responsible for the world’s first successful release of two female cats in 2016: the orphaned sisters Isa and Fera. They’ve since reintroduced many more over the past decade, not only in the Amazon but also in the Pantanal wetlands to the south of the rainforest.
After five months at the university vet hospital, Xamã was declared able to travel. Thanks to nutritional supplements, his weight had nearly tripled, reaching 27.5 kg (61 lbs). During this time, his handlers took extreme care to ensure minimal human interaction with Xamã to prevent any kind of habituation or attachment to his caretakers.
Then began a long journey of nearly 700 kilometers (435 miles) overland from Mato Grosso to the northern state of Pará. The destination was an enormous rehabilitation enclosure in the middle of the rainforest built by Onçafari and previously used for two jaguar sisters, Vivara and Pandora, who were the first to be reintroduced in the Brazilian Amazon by Onçafari.
But this time, the challenge was much greater.
“Because of the technical knowledge we already had, I was reluctant because Xamã was very young,” says biologist Leonardo Sartorello, coordinator of Onçafari’s reintroduction program. “It was really risky. Once we released him into the 15,000-square-meter [3.7-acre] enclosure, we almost never saw him again. It was really large for such a small creature. We wouldn’t have known if he had died, or if he’d been bitten by a snake. He was just a cub!”
Much-awaited release after nearly two years
The initial phase was the hardest, Sartorello says. Xamã wasn’t fed during the long trip, and refused to eat for six days after arriving at the enclosure — a worrisome situation for a cub. But he gradually began eating again when Sartorello’s team left pieces of chicken and beef for him.
They’d placed cameras inside the enclosure so they could monitor his adaptation and evaluate his progress. As time passed, they could see that he was exploring more of the territory. Still, he took more than a year to visit some areas of the enclosure.
One of the determining factors for defining the right moment to release Xamã was his ability to hunt. When the first live prey were released into the enclosure, he would take 10 to 15 minutes to kill them. After more practice, he was able to apply the final blow in less than two minutes. “At the end of the process, we’d only hear a couple screams from the animals we released and it would be over,” Sartorello says. “That meant he was killing them correctly. He was grabbing them at the base of the skull, biting the neck and killing the animals instantly. And this was really good.”
Another watershed in determining whether the young cat was ready were his interactions with other jaguars that approached the enclosure’s fence. Videos showed that Xamã was submissive to the bigger male cats during the initial encounters. He would at times crouch or lie down, and sometimes even lay with his belly up. But the last videos taken by the camera traps showed him challenging possible rivals: He no longer felt intimidated.
The long-awaited day finally arrived in October 2024. After nearly 24 months, the gate of the enclosure was opened for a process called soft release, in which the animal leaves the space in which it has been living anytime it wants to. It took Xamã more than 12 hours to take his first steps toward a completely free life. And then he never looked back.
Monitoring via the GPS collar, which transmits a location every two hours, has allowed the research team to track Xamã’s travels across more than 14,000 hectares of rainforest since he left the enclosure. The tracker’s battery should last for about a year, after which the satellite signal will stop working and the VHF radio will be activated. It will, however, be of little use in a rainforest the size of the Amazon.
Despite the large distance he traveled in the beginning, over the last two months Xamã seems to have established his routine in an area about 15 km (9 mi) from his enclosure. “I think it must be a location he was fond of, with plenty of food and not so much competition from other males,” Sartorello says.
A success story where many others haven’t ended well
Brazil is home to more jaguars than any other country in the world, making it a prime hotspot for conservation of the species. In the distant past, the big cat’s range stretched from the United States all the way to Argentina. But today, the species has gone locally extinct from much of its range.
Brazilian jaguar population is currently estimated at close to 10,000 individuals: some 250-300 in the Atlantic Rainforest, fewer than 500 in the Caatinga dry forest, 3,500-4,000 in the Pantanal, and the rest spread out across the Amazon.
But the jaguar is threatened in every single one of these biomes — more in some than others, and perhaps for different reasons. Xamã’s reintroduction is a success story, but other wildfire victims haven’t been as fortunate. Amanaci and Gaia were two such jaguars.
In 2024, the Pantanal faced yet another severe drought period. The water level of the Paraguay River, the biome’s largest, reached record-level lows. Dried-out vegetation and strong winds set up the prospect for devastating wildfires — one that duly played out as blazes spread far and wide. Entire areas were devastated by fire, leaving black soil with a layer of ashes. Countless burned animal carcasses were found, among them that of Gaia, a female jaguar that Onçafari had been monitoring for 10 years.
Amanaci didn’t die, but she’s destined to spend the rest of her life in captivity, never returning to the Pantanal. Also a victim of forest fires, she was found in 2020 by firefighters inside a house in Poconé municipality, Mato Grosso, with second- and third-degree burns to all four of her paws.
Rescuers took Amanaci to NEX No Extinction, an institution in the state of Goiás specialized in caring for and rehabilitating rescued wild felines. There, she spent two months in intensive treatment, including the application of stem cells to help heal the injuries from the fire. Still, there was irreversible damage to her tendons; she will never be able to hunt again, making life in the wild impossible for her.
NEX has cared for 78 jaguars since it was founded in 2000. Today, it has 27 animals at its facilities. Maintenance costs are high, especially for an organization that depends entirely on donations and receives no federal funding. Monthly costs to care for each animal are around $700. This doesn’t include unforeseen expenses, like surgeries.
“Each jaguar eats between 3 and 5 kilograms [7-11 lbs] of meat every day,” says Daniela Gianni, NEX’s coordinator of projects and activities.
Deforestation, poaching and trafficking
While wildfires intensified by the effects of climate changes and worsened by agribusiness-driven deforestation continue to pose a major threat to the jaguars living in the Pantanal, the big cat has different enemies in the other biomes.
Along the border between Brazil and Argentina, the neighboring national parks of Iguaçu and Iguazú are home to the largest jaguar population in the Atlantic Rainforest biome. Nearly extinct in the biome a few decades ago, these felines’ numbers are growing in the region thanks to two conservation projects: Brazil’s Onças do Iguaçu and Argentina’s Proyecto Yaguareté. Still, the animals remain vulnerable to the impacts of human activities.
“In the Atlantic Rainforest, the main threats are loss of habitat and fragmentation of the forest, which can lead to the loss of genetic diversity,” says biologist Yara Barros, executive coordinator of Onças do Iguaçu. “Small, very isolated groups are more likely to have genetic problems because there are no new animals introduced to reproduce.”
Other threats to the big cats in Iguaçu National Park include being struck by vehicles and their proximity to farms, which can lead to conflicts with farmers and cattle ranchers. “These conflicts with humans are also the consequence of lost habitat, because farms are being created nearer to the forests all the time,” Barros says.
Roberto Cabral, an environmental analyst at IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency and part of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, says these conflicts can also drive farmers to kill jaguars out of revenge.
“And, if you look at it, it’s a big cycle,” he says. “People in the rural areas hunt for capybaras, caimans, pacas, peccaries, collared peccaries and deer, which are what jaguars eat. If there is less wild prey available, they start hunting calves, for example. And then the humans have zero tolerance for losing any of their cattle to a wildcat.”
Chinese demand and lenient legislation
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, in the Amazon Rainforest, jaguar conservation programs in the middle of this jungle more than half the size of the United States are much more complicated and the threats more challenging. The latter also include poaching, which has an international element. In 2022, Mongabay reported on how easily jaguar and ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) hides could be found in markets in Iquitos, Peru, and along the banks of the Amazon River. And that wasn’t all: merchants also sold the heads of these animals and jewelry made from their teeth and claws.
The report showed how demand for these types of products had increased over the past decade, driven by demand from China. With the number of tigers (Panthera tigris) perilously low across Asia, and many range countries enacting stronger legislation to protect the species, the black market has increasingly turned its focus to the jaguar — an animal whose Chinese name, 美洲豹, translates into “American tiger.”
“Chinese demand is also a threat both because [jaguars] are rare and also because they are seen as a substitute for tigers,” Cabral says. “While it’s not the largest issue right now, it could potentially be one of the main threats in the future.”
An expanding Asian market in the Amazon is getting the attention of opportunists looking to earn some quick cash, like jaguar poachers. Brazilian media recently reported on a raid on a house in the municipality of Santo Antônio do Içá in Amazonas state, where officers found a jaguar cub that was about 8 months old, being raised as a pet. The man found in possession of the animal said he had gone out hunting and found the cub alone, and “decided to adopt it.” Its mother had most likely been killed.
“This story that they went out into the woods and found a baby wildcat is the most ridiculous thing a person could say,” says Sartorello from Onçafari. “In my 25 years of working with jaguars in the middle of the forest, I have never found a cub [on its own]. And these people seem to find cubs pretty often.”
In the Santo Antônio de Içá raid, authorities seized the cub, which has virtually been ruled out for rewilding because of its habituation to humans. They sent the animal to NEX.
Lenient Brazilian legislation allows poachers like those in Amazonas and other parts of Brazil to continue hunting jaguars, according to environmentalists, animal protection agency representatives, and even government authorities.
Hunting wild animals without authorization from the appropriate environmental agency is punishable by a prison term of three months to a year, and fines of around $880 per animal.
“The penalty doesn’t really help the situation,” Sartorello says. “One man who killed four jaguars in 2023 paid $3,500, and that was the end of the story. He’s a free man.”
A long and costly process
Even though Xamã’s return to nature has been much celebrated, the reintroduction process has been far from simple. It has involved the collaboration of a wide range of professionals, and has taken a long time and come at a high cost, says Gianni from NEX. According to her, the total cost up to the moment of release can range from $140,000 to $180,000. And there’s always the possibility that the release won’t be successful; there are no guarantees. The animal may adapt well to its return to a free life, but it may also need to be recaptured if it doesn’t.
“The bureaucracy is excessive, the cost is extremely high, and the government doesn’t fund any of it,” Gianni says. “The animal’s health must be perfect before she can be released, and the area needs to be mapped. At the end of the training, a detailed report must be presented to the environmental agencies for approval. It’s a job that takes at least three years to complete.
“Aside from this, we also depend on the animal’s temperament,” she adds. “Sometimes the bureaucracy is so complex that it takes too long for the animal to be released that it doesn’t come through in time and we end up having to retrain her to live in captivity.”
World Animal Protection, one of the organizations that helped fund Xamã’s reintroduction to Amazon, produced a documentary about the story: Xamã — On the Jaguar’s Trail. The film clearly shows the direct relationship between the young jaguar’s tragedy and the advance of agribusiness.
“In 2022, the year Xamã was rescued, Mato Grosso was the state in Brazil with the most wildfires,” says Trevisan, WAPs wildlife coordinator. “The area of land burned was nearly the size of Denmark. We lost an entire generation in the forest.”
She says the connection between food production and its impact on wild animals isn’t always clear to people. The documentary maps out this relationship, also connecting the dots to wildfires, pesticide contamination, vehicle strikes, and defaunation.
“Even though Xamã’s story had a happy ending, we know that many other animals will have the same experience and that it’s a huge problem in Brazil,” Trevisan says. “What people don’t realize is that the fauna impacted won’t only be the animal that died or who will have to spend her life in captivity. Wildlife have ecological roles, they participate in the dynamic of their ecosystem by spreading seeds, catching prey or cycling nutrients, for example. The absence of these animals will bring about a much larger impact on the health of the forests and on the climate.”
Banner image: A jaguar in the Brazilian Pantanal. Image courtesy of Gregoire Dubois.
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This story was first published here in Portuguese on May 12, 2025.