Only known wild jaguar in US captured on film

The Center for Biological Diversity released this video as a Canadian mining company is considering El Jefe’s home range as the site for a future copper mine.

Wednesday’s footage was taken by remote sensor cameras, and it shows El Jefe the wild jaguar making his way through the brush, before it goes up a creek. Because jaguars are so elusive, studying them anywhere is challenging, but following the only known jaguar in the U.S.is even more challenging, he said.

“The Rosemont Mine would destroy El Jefe’s home and severely hamstring recovery of jaguars in the United States”, Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, says in a press release.

Among the large cats roaming the earth, the jaguar is the only one native to North and South America.

Things remained unchanged until the volunteers working for the NGO managed to release the footage on El Jefe, another male jaguar, rumored to be the last living wild jaguar. They finally succeeded and captured the first-ever video of the animal.

This powerful beast, which is characterized by easily identifiable distinctive spots on the body, was placed on the endangered species list in 1972. The video was submitted by nonprofits Conservation CATalyst and the Center for Biological Diversity, both of whom are closely watching over the endangered species in Arizona’s mountain ranges; the jaguar has been considered endangered since 2011.

A hunter shot the last verified female jaguar in 1963 in northern Arizona. But biologists hope that El Jefe won’t always be quite so alone.

“El Jefe” has been the fifth jaguar to be identified and photographed in Arizona since 1996. Moreover, according to the NGO’s estimates, since logging-related activities began, the wildcats lost thousands of acres of territory, a fact which ultimately led to the big cat’s demise. According to the two nonprofits, that critical point is a potential conflict that is in the works – a conflict that threatens to disrupt the federally protected land that the big cat has called home in recent years.

Such conservation efforts are especially important nowadays, given that plans are underway to build the Rosemont Copper mine right in the middle of the Santa Rita Mountains, therefore putting at risk the survival of these already threatened big cats.

Visit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Flickr website, where they document all the jaguar and ocelot sightings.

El Jefe means “the boss” in Spanish. But in the USA, it is all the more of a challenge to capture the only known living specimen on camera.