Human-jaguar conflict

Some simple changes to livestock management may help to reduce losses to jaguars.

Find out how to protect you livestock from jaguar attack here!

Wildlife Research in Belize

Conservation research on Belizean mammals

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Can people and jaguars coexist?...

Background

Jaguar populations suffered intense persecution from the commercial skin trade throughout the 20th century.

Over the past 100 years jaguar range has contracted by ~40% and the breeding population is estimated at below 50,000 individuals.

Since the inclusion of the jaguar in an international treaty (CITES) which banned trade in wildlife products derived from endangered species, commercial jaguar hunting has declined.

Today the main threats to long-term jaguar survival are:

- habitat loss and fragmentation

- reduction of wild prey

- direct persecution by livestock owners

Cattle ranching, a growing industry in Central America

Research in Belize

In areas with a high proportion of forest cover, such as Belize, how do jaguars living near the forest edge use the boundary between forest and human habitation?

Our research has focused on farms and villages surrounding the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (CBWS), a protected area that lies within the Maya mountain range in southeast Belize.

Our research methods included:

1) Large-scale camera trap surveys sampling ~ 500km² to estimate jaguar density.

2) Long-term camera trap stations to monitor jaguar visitation rates to farms and villages.

3) Scat collection for diet analysis.

4) Regular discussions with stakeholders to monitor livestock predation on and around farms and villages and to evaluate the rate of lethal control of jaguars.

The situation in Belize

In Belize 70% of the land is still forested.

Livestock production is common and is characterised by many small farms and few large farms.

Many of these farms are at risk from predation because often pastures are surrounded by forest and cattle range freely.

This can be particularly damaging for the small-scale farmer.

Informal hunting of big cats by livestock owners is common.

Threats

To persist, jaguars need space, prey and connectivity between populations.

Problems for people, problems for jaguars

Farms and villages often have an abundance of livestock and domestic animals, and those neighbouring forest fragments are potentially resource rich areas for big cats.

In the absence of sufficient wild prey, or effective measures to prevent livestock predation, farmers may lose substantial numbers of animals to jaguars.

Lethal control is common and cattle farms may function as ecological sinks for big cats from the surrounding areas. This is unlikely to be sustainable for jaguar populations in the long-term.

Calf killed by jaguar

Jaguars killed by farmer

Cattle allowed to free-range in forests neighbouring pastures are at risk of cat attack

The project has provided data on the numbers, movements, habitat use and diet of individual jaguars within the protected forest and in the surrounding unprotected forest, farms and villages allowing us to:

1) Investigate how jaguar density varies from a protected rainforest, through the neighbouring human landscape, a matrix of agriculture, communities and unprotected forest and savannahs.

2) Compare activity and habitat use within and between jaguars and pumas in an undisturbed protected forest with those of the neighbouring human-influenced landscape.

3) Compare the breadth and overlap of diets of jaguars and pumas using a protected forest with those using the neighbouring human-influenced landscape.

4) Investigate whether and how the spatial configuration of forest and farms influences jaguar encounter rates with human habitation and thus the risk of depredation and lethal control.

5) Identify specific characteristics of jaguars that are associated with risk of lethal control.

6) Combine data on levels of lethal control of jaguars in southern Belize with estimates of jaguar density and our knowledge of jaguar ecology in the area to assess the long-term population viability of jaguars in Belize.

For information about the findings of this research please see our Publications list.

In the future we hope to continue the study of human-jaguar conflict in and around the CBWS.

We hope to:

1) Collect more detailed information on the movement of jaguars within a human-influenced landscape using GPS collar technology. In particular we need data on dispersal rates and distances of young adult jaguars to investigate rates of immigration of young jaguars into unprotected areas so that we can better model the likely impact of lethal control

2) Work with livestock owners to test strategies to prevent livestock predation as alternatives to lethal control.

Please contact us if you are interested in participating in, or funding, such research.

Note the damaged canines, caused by previous gunshot wounds to the face. These injuries prevented predation of large wild prey by this jaguar and forced it to start taking domestic dogs

Assessing the body condition of the shot jaguar

Camera trap photograph of M03-10, an adult male jaguar, on the outskirts of a village taken shortly before he was shot for attacking a dog

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