You may remember back before Christmas we did a post on the effort to protect the northernmost population of jaguars in the America's. The Northern Jaguar Project is a cross border collaboration between conservationists in Old Mexico and the US.
The project got started with the purchase of 10,000 acre Rancho Los Pavos a several years back. That may sound like a lot of territory to most of us but if you remember your high school geography one square mile is 640 acres. So 10,000 acres is a little over 15 square miles.
To a male jaguar that's a hop, skip and a jump.
Recently there was some great news coming from the folks at the Norther Jaguar Project. They were successful in their fund raising and were able to purchase the adjacent 35,000 acre Rancho Zetasora bringing the total land under protection to 45,000 acres. When you combine that with Sonora's nearby 450,000 acre Ajos- Bavispe National Forest and Wildlife refuge, you're starting to talk about enough real estate to be meaningful to the 80-120 jaguars that inhabit the area.
The goal is to protect enough land to sustain these magnificent cats and even to allow them, over time, to extend their current range to portions of their historic range including the Sky Islands of southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
And that would make this resident of SW New Mexico very happy indeed.
It won't be easy. There are many obstacles, not the least of which is the incredibly short sighted effort to build a fence between the border states of the US and Mexico. I mean come on; remember the Maginot Line?
So, thanks to those of you that contributed the first time around and made it possible to acquire the Rancho Zetasora. If you don't have any plans for your "Economic Stimulus" check that is supposed to be in the mail, send a portion of it to the good folks at the Northern Jaguar Project. They'll put it to good use.
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