Biology Issue Report, Jaguar (1)

8/2/2019 Biology Issue Report, Jaguar (1)

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Biology issue report By Sam Mansfield

Decreasing numbers of the Jaguar within the rainforests of South and Central America

Problem: The decreasing numbers of jaguar population within Central and South America from

human interference can result in the species extinction. From the 1960s to the 1970s the jaguar

experienced a population decrease of 18000, as a result of poaching. Now their numbers continue to

decline as a result of deforestation and the destruction of their habitat. As a result of the continuing

decrease in numbers the jaguar is now listed as endangered.

The Jaguar

The Jaguar or Panthera Onca is the largest and most powerful big cat in the western hemisphere.

The distinguishing feature that attaches the jaguar to the panthera genus is the modified hyoid bone

in its throat that allows it to roar (8). Because of its illusiveness and camouflage biologists have only

been able to estimate figures about population size, however this has not stopped them monitoring

and studying the jaguars specific behavioural patterns. The map (1) shows that the range of the

panther used to extend the whole south America and up to third of the united states within its south

states but now the largest known population of the jaguar exists within the amazon basin and asmall part of the united states (current range shown as darker orange) in Mexico and central

America the jaguars range is only a third of its original range (10), this is because the jaguar

population experienced rapid decline from poaching and its habitat being destroyed which still

occurs today, with its protection status at near threatened by the IUCN (7) and in the Endangered

species act jaguars are listed as endangered.


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Physical characteristics

This picture shows the distinct head shape of the jaguar up close along with its distinct pattern. The

overall body size and coloration of the cat often relates to its location - jaguars found in dense

forested areas of the Amazon Basin are often only half the size of those found in more open terrain

(3), their weight is around 100 kg and can grow up to 6ft in length (4), and within the amazon basin

the Jaguar has a darker coloration to provide better camouflage within the dense vegetation and

forest providing a greater chance of survival and success in hunting (3). Approximately 6% of the

jaguar population consists of the black panther or melanistic jaguar which has a black coloration

caused by a dominant melanistic allele, which is even harder to 41see in its habitat by prey (5).

Unlike many big cats Jaguars are very suited to water, and are very good swimmers using this to

their advantage by utilising their ability to hunt for prey from rivers providing prey in the form of

turtles, caiman/alligators, and fish. This picture shows how suited to water the jaguar is. Jaguars

also eat larger animals such as deer, peccaries, capybaras, and tapirs.

They sometimes climb trees to prepare an ambush, killing their prey with one powerful bite (2). This

powerful bite is the Jaguars very specific method of killing which is very different to its big cat

counterparts in a method experts describe as brain piercing where the jaguar bites straight into

the top of its preys skull straight into its brain killing it instantly rather than biting its neck which

suffocated it or severs the spinal cord, this method can result in the jaguar losing many of its teeth

(4).


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pollination (4) protecting its habitat to ensure a large enough population of the jaguar will benefit

many other species in the amazon basin. Being an apex predator the jaguar ensures that the number

of its prey is kept under its control.

Corridors being lost

This map (6) shows the corridors between jaguar populations and how many of them are under

threat from the reduction of their habitat which can result in the isolation of jaguar populations and

therefore result in the decline in jaguar numbers. As you can see the populations furthest north and

furthest south are at the highest risk of becoming isolated as they are the most sparsely populated,

and have the least amount of corridors available which means if one corridor is destroyed then so is

its only corridor, which contrasts with the corridors in the amazon basin which have 3 or 4 between

each jaguar population connecting to several other populations. This reduces the risk of isolation

because if one corridor is destroyed some others still remain meaning that mating between

populations can still take place.Throughout of the whole of the amazon area its eastern region isthe most affected, with its high population, as well as a large timber industry it has associated

industrys with mining, like iron ore and even gold, and in some instances (10).


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Solutions to prevent the jaguars extinction

1. Legal protection

The jaguar

The amazon

2. Breeding in captivity

3. Nature reserves

4. Sustainable harvesting

Legal protection-the amazon

There are many fronts we should protect the jaguar on; this is because it needs many different

factors to survive on, not only can we protect it from hunting, but also we can use legal protection to

ensure the jaguars habitat.

Environmental, political/social, and economical issues supporting legal protection of the amazon


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to be put in place

We need to protect the jaguars habitat as this allows the jaguar to reproduce and hunt prey

peacefully; presuming that poaching has decreased significantly from the legal protection. Even

though gaining protection will be very problematic for the whole amazon as it is used for in many

industries for its raw materials, however many other environmental, political, and social issues

involve the amazons depletion as the root of a problem supporting the argument.

For example a very large environmental issue that can be helped with the protection of the amazon

is global warming; the amazon has been described as the "lungs of our planet" because it provides

the essential service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. It is estimated that more

than 20 % of Earth's oxygen is produced in the rainforest (9), supporting the argument to save the

amazon, and therefore save the jaguars habitat.

A social issue which again supports the protection of the rainforest is that not only is the jaguars

habitat being destroyed so is the same habitat of the indigenous people,In Brazil alone, Europeancolonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them has gone

centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands

continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest tribes and populations are also disappearing.

This links to another economic reason to stop logging the amazon rainforest as it can provide up to

300 drugs that have been predicted to be discovered which in turn can benefit

pharmaceutical companies who can gain $4 billion dollars and in turn benefit wider society with

$147 billion dollars (9). If the rainforest continues to be depleted than these potential medicines can

be lost. Experts estimate that we are losing 137 plants, animal and insect species every single day

due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species


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disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs

sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are

derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested

by scientists (9).

This means that the preservation of the rainforest has not only huge financial benefits but also has

massive biological potential and benefits which could be the key to curing many diseases like cancer,

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70%

of these plants are found in the rainforest. 25% of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting

drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest (9).

All of these issues and factors all support the argument to legally protect the amazon. The benefit of

legally protecting the amazon rainforest is that it secures and ensures the amazon with it being the

most reliable method of preserving the amazon, unlike sustainable harvesting, where some

companies may just use the sustainability as a selling point for their product or to justify the

companys presence in amazon.

Legal protection-the jaguar

Protection of the jaguar after it had undergone extreme hunting in the 1960s and 1970s has made it

illegal to hunt the jaguar and sell its lustrous fur on the black market. The legal protection has

deterred hunting and poaching not only from the actually illegality of it but from the harsh sentence

it carries, going up to 6 years sentence in some countries. Despite having dwindling numbers the

jaguar does not receive full protection in some territories within the Amazonian basin and

elsewhere. Jaguars are fully protected by national legislation in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana,

Paraguay, Uruguay, USA and Venezuela. Hunting of problem animals is legal in Brazil, Costa Rica,

Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, and trophy hunting is permitted in Bolivia. There is no legal protection

for jaguars in Ecuador or Guyana, which means some jaguar populations are susceptible to poaching

within its own habitat.

Breeding in captivity

Breeding in captivity involves maintaining and slowly growing the jaguar population within a private

enclosure or a public zoo.

A huge positive to breeding jaguars in captivity is the complete safety the jaguars will have from

poachers and also from the gradual depletion of its habitat, however with this breeding in captivity

has many shortcomings, being ineffective on some fronts. Breeding in captivity is very expensive and

requires special facilities, specially trained experts, and long periods of time which can result in only

increasing the jaguar population by 2 around every 6 years. Another problem with breeding in

captivity is the reintroduction to the wild the jaguars will need which can be very risky with the

jaguar being incapable of adapting to the rainforest in time to survive.

I feel that breeding captivity should be a solution as a last resort when jaguar numbers are so low

that small numbers that can be gained from breeding in captivity make a significant impact, also


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even if breeding in captivity does not make a significant impact it is certain that the jaguar will still

survive.

Nature Reserves

Nature reserves involve taking part of the jaguarsnatural environment and completely protecting it

from dangers from logging and poaching, allowing the jaguar to hunt and mate without disturbance.

Nature reserves can also reduce the effects of population isolation when corridors between jaguar

populations are being lost from over logging, this can be done by making spaces between nature

reserves protected by the two reserves, this will ensure that some links are not lost and will help

sparsely populate the jaguar throughout the amazon basin. To gain permission and allowance of the

nature reserve to use land that could potentially be used in logging, sustainable harvesting should be

allowed so that companies can still make profit of the land without depleting its resources and

allowing the jaguars, and manyother endangered species habitat to remain.

I would use the nature reserve as a solution if gaining legal protection for the jaguars habitat fails,as it gains the same as legal protection other than 2 factors. One of these is the size of the

protection; legal protection will encompass the whole of the amazon whilst a nature reserve will

only designate a significantly smaller area preservation to benefit the Amazonian wildlife. Also laws

on hunting on nature reserves are not as strict as those areas that are legally protected

A problem with nature reserves is that they require large expanses of land, which can be expensive

to own in the name of the reserve, as many logging companies desire this land for its raw materials

and can acquire it with their large income from the exploitation of the amazon.

Sustainable harvesting


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Sustainable harvesting will still involve using the amazon as a resource but in different ways instead

of logging, for example the amazon has demonstrated that it can provide medical plants, fruits, nuts,

and oils (9). In this aspect the rainforest can provide long term profits benefiting the companies that

use the rainforest in the short term destroying the rain forest like logging, this in turn will preservethe jaguars habitat, and maybe even encourage its survival with its vital ecological role benefiting

these specialist industries. In fact, the latest statistics show that sustainable harvesting can benefit

the wildlife living in the rainforest and the companies that use its valuable resources for profit. Land

converted to cattle operations yields the landowner $60 per acre; if timber is harvested, the land is

worth $400 per acre. However, if medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, oils and other renewable and

sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the landowner $2,400 per acre (9).

Overall I believe to give the jaguar species the best chance of avoiding extinction and growing its

population is to use 2 of these solutions in moderation with each other, I would use Legal protection

(of both the Amazon and the Jaguar species) and sustainable harvesting because Legal protectionwill give the jaguar a certainty to surviving as all we need to prevent the decrease in numbers is to

stop poaching and to protect its habitat, however, Legal protection is a very unlikely outcome on its

own as it requires all non-sustainable resourcing from the amazon to stop which will be a very

severe blow to the large companies that use it for raw resources who carry more power than the

organisations who are fighting for the preservation of the amazon, with the addition of sustainable

harvesting companies can still use the Amazon to make large profits and use it in the long term

rather than short term industries like logging, benefiting both the jaguar and the thousands of other

unique plant and animal species there and the Large companies.

Bibliography

http://wanttoknowit.com/where-do-jaguars-live/(1)

http://www.edu.pe.ca/southernkings/jaguar.htm(2)

http://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/jaguar.htm(3)

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/animals/mammals/jaguar.htm(4)

http://www.planeta.com/planeta/08/0804jaguars.html(5)

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/jaguars/photo-map-interactive(6)

http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/jaguar.php(7)

http://replantingtherainforests.org/site/index.php/Wildlife/jaguars-caught-in-conservations-spotl

ight/Jaguar-Conservation-in-the-Spotlight.html(8)

http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm(9)

Non internet source; Conservation assessment of jaguars panthera onca in eastern Amazoniaand northeastern Brazil by Tadue G. de oliveira of the department of biology in maranhao state
http://wanttoknowit.com/where-do-jaguars-live/http://wanttoknowit.com/where-do-jaguars-live/http://www.edu.pe.ca/southernkings/jaguar.htmhttp://www.edu.pe.ca/southernkings/jaguar.htmhttp://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/jaguar.htmhttp://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/jaguar.htmhttp://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/animals/mammals/jaguar.htmhttp://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/animals/mammals/jaguar.htmhttp://www.planeta.com/planeta/08/0804jaguars.htmlhttp://www.planeta.com/planeta/08/0804jaguars.htmlhttp://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/jaguars/photo-map-interactivehttp://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/jaguars/photo-map-interactivehttp://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/jaguar.phphttp://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/jaguar.phphttp://replantingtherainforests.org/site/index.php/Wildlife/jaguars-caught-in-conservations-spotlight/Jaguar-Conservation-in-the-Spotlight.htmlhttp://replantingtherainforests.org/site/index.php/Wildlife/jaguars-caught-in-conservations-spotlight/Jaguar-Conservation-in-the-Spotlight.htmlhttp://replantingtherainforests.org/site/index.php/Wildlife/jaguars-caught-in-conservations-spotlight/Jaguar-Conservation-in-the-Spotlight.htmlhttp://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htmhttp://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htmhttp://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htmhttp://replantingtherainforests.org/site/index.php/Wildlife/jaguars-caught-in-conservations-spotlight/Jaguar-Conservation-in-the-Spotlight.htmlhttp://replantingtherainforests.org/site/index.php/Wildlife/jaguars-caught-in-conservations-spotlight/Jaguar-Conservation-in-the-Spotlight.htmlhttp://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/jaguar.phphttp://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/jaguars/photo-map-interactivehttp://www.planeta.com/planeta/08/0804jaguars.htmlhttp://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/animals/mammals/jaguar.htmhttp://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/jaguar.htmhttp://www.edu.pe.ca/southernkings/jaguar.htmhttp://wanttoknowit.com/where-do-jaguars-live/


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universityUEMA (10)

Evaluation

I believe that (9) was my most useful source as it provided me with significant figures which I could

not have collated myself and data that was very relevant to my research, supporting my argument

thoroughly and the points I was making about sustainable harvesting which was a key part to my

main solution, without this source I would not have been able to understand what beneficial impact

the amazon had on the earth and how significant these impacts were. Another positive from this

source is that it is entirely designed to provide facts, no opinionated points, making the source much

more reliable than some others like source (2) which had some obvious opinions around the jaguar

meaning I had to be very careful about the information I had extracted from this website as it could

have corrupted the validity of my research.

Sources (1) (2) and (3) provided me with some very good background information about the jaguar

and its current situation in the amazon and taught me about its population history and how that has

changed over the years.

Documents

Biology Issue Report, Jaguar (1)