- Latin America’s feline species are losing their habitat and becoming trapped in small patches.
- Scientists are concerned about isolated populations and trapped individuals that are unable to migrate. This isn’t the only threat: reprisal hunting, vehicle collisions and the incursion of feral and undomesticated dogs into wild areas means that many cats could be on the path to extinction.
- Researchers say biological corridors are vital for their conservation.
The jaguar moves between patches of forest in the Mesoamerican Corridor across Central America. Meanwhile, the majestic Colombian Massif still serves as a refuge for the oncilla, while the puma silently roams the vast expanses of the Paraguayan Chaco fleeing the reprisals of ranchers. The pampas cat pads stealthily among the remaining dry forests of Southern Ecuador and Northern Peru, while the ocelot, a medium-sized cat of nocturnal habits, attempts to camouflage itself in remnants of the Atlantic Rainforest in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. All these scenes allude to the same problem: a group of cats trying to survive in shrinking territories.
While the range of these five felines is large and many of them inhabit protected areas, science has shown that to maintain healthy populations there needs to be connection between individuals. In addition to protected areas, they also need access to biological corridors to make contact with other unrelated cats.
This is why it is increasingly important that these corridors are either fully protected and have sustainable resource management plans in place to ensure free movement of species.
“Establishing corridors is one of the best opportunities, and in many cases the last or only opportunity, for fauna and flora to coexist in landscapes dominated by humans, that is, where plants and animals have the opportunity to move around, improving their chances of survival in the long term,” says José Fernando González Maya, Scientific Director of the Water and Land Conservation Project (ProCAT) and Co-President of the Small Carnivore Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Journalists from five countries, coordinated by Mongabay Latam, chose five biological corridors distributed between Peru, Ecuador, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Colombia and Brazil to expose the threats faced by five felines that are crucial to Latin American ecosystems.
One of the most important findings was that in each of these places, corridors aim to ensure the conservation of felines by reducing the risks they face, including reprisal hunting, habitat loss, vehicle collisions and the incursion of feral or domesticated dogs in their places of refuge.
Protecting the largest
The jaguar (Panthera onca) and the puma (Puma concolor) are the two largest felines in the Americas and establishing biological corridors is of vital importance for their conservation, considering that these species require vast areas of land to satisfy their basic needs.
“In a world dominated primarily by humans,