In 2016, wild cat conservation organization Panthera recorded a jaguar for the first time in the Merendón Mountains between Honduras and Guatemala. A decade then passed with no camera sighting of the elusive species — but on Feb. 6, a jaguar was finally documented once again in images shared with the public this week.
Taken at around 7,217 feet on the tallest peak of the mountain range’s cloud forests, just over 6 feet away from the 2016 sighting, the photos mark the highest elevation at which a “cloud jaguar” has been spotted in Honduras. They also signify a major win for the org’s long-running Jaguar Corridor Initiative, which aims to protect the species by developing safe passages for the animals to roam, hunt, mate, and establish territories.
“What makes this especially significant is what it signals about connectivity. This individual isn’t a resident — he’s a traveler, moving through a corridor that links populations in Honduras and Guatemala, and ultimately connects habitats stretching from Mexico to Argentina,” Franklin Castañeda, Honduras country director at Panthera, told Nice News.
“That corridor only functions if the stepping stones within it are protected,” he continued. “This sighting confirms the Merendón range is still serving that role, and it gives us real urgency to secure the next link in the chain.”
Panthera
The most significant threats jaguars face in Honduras are poaching and deforestation, Castañeda explained, noting that the country has one of the highest rates of the latter in all of Latin America.
To help the species — which is listed as near threatened by the IUCN — overcome these challenges, Panthera’s team uses acoustic and camera monitoring to identify poaching hot spots as well as track jaguar and prey populations. “The acoustic devices have also been used to identify areas with the least amount of poaching activity, where jaguar prey reintroductions have been successfully carried out for peccaries and iguanas,” Castañeda said.
The SMART-EarthRanger Conservation Alliance has also proved crucial to Panthera’s efforts. Launched last October, it’s a vast, global network of resources and software that helps train and support organizations safeguarding habitats and wildlife. The recent milestone serves as proof that Panthera and its partners’ technology investments, anti-poaching ranger patrols, and prey-reintroduction efforts have “momentum” behind them, Castañeda said.
Armed with tools like these, the org aims to strengthen the Jaguar Corridor by securing 30 priority jaguar conservation landscapes by 2030, a goal that goes hand in hand with Honduras’ pledge to end deforestation by 2029. Panthera currently has a presence in 11 of Latin America’s 18 jaguar range nations, including Brazil, which hosts the largest population in the Americas.
Ultimately, the new images are a beam of hope for conservationists, a sign that they’re on the right track. Castañeda said: “The ‘cloud jaguar’ sighting reminds us that jaguars are resilient, adaptable, and wide-ranging, occasionally using high-elevation habitat that people wouldn’t typically associate with the species, and underscores the need for conservation of all habitat types.”
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