Julia Kumari Drapkin reports from Panama on efforts to protect jaguars, the biggest cats in the all of the Americas. She profiles one group's work to find the corridors that jaguars use to move between protected areas.
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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. National parks around the globe provide important refuge for wildlife and for people. They're places where humans can reconnect with the natural world. They also protect animals from too much human encroachment. But parks rarely provide enough habitats to ensure the survival of an entire species. This is especially true of large predators, such as jaguars. They're the biggest cats in all of the Americas. In Central America, scientists are trying to protect jaguars by identifying the corridors the cats use to roam from park to park. Julia Kumari Drapkin joined the search in Panama.
JULIA KUMARI DRAPKIN: Biologist Melva Olmos and her team tunnel through the tropical forest with machetes. They're just 26 miles from Panama City, but here – in Chagres National Park – it's prime habitat for jaguars. To keep tabs on the cats, she ties cameras with motion sensors to the trees.
MELVA OLMOS: One camera in each side of the trail, so there will be chances to photograph both sides of the same animal at the same time.
DRAPKIN: Olmos keeps an eye on jaguars for a living. She tracks where jaguars are in Panama and where they're going.
OLMOS: I'm going to mark the point on the GPS so we have the position in the map in the office.
DRAPKIN: Olmos knows that jaguars live in this park, and in another park called Soberania, to the west. Between the two parks lies a strip of scattered towns.
ALAN RABINOWITZ: What you have are big green spots and just humans in between.
DRAPKIN: Alan Rabinowitz is concerned about the area that separates the green spots – the area between the parks. Rabinowitz is president of Panthera, a wildcat conservation group. He says jaguars have always traveled through this landscape, but over time it's filled with more people. Rabinowitz fears that eventually the jaguars in these parks will be cut off from one another – and he wants to make sure that doesn't happen.
RABINOWITZ: The one main way to prevent extinction is to try to keep, at least a little – it doesn't take much – a little genetic flow between breeding populations.
DRAPKIN: To keep that flow between the two parks means first figuring out how jaguars cross the human landscape. So Melva Olmos is helping Rabinowitz find these jaguar pathways. But that's not so easy – jaguars are expert sneaks. They tend to pass unseen, so Olmos looks for clues. She breaks out the field map. She looks for jaguar-friendly landscapes – areas with water that offer a bit of cover. Areas like this, along Lake Alajuela, on the edge of Chagres National Park. Women bathe their children by the shore here, lined with small tin roof houses. She enters one with a big window overlooking the lake. She asks the owner, Senor Cervantes, what kinds of animals have been living here – iguanas, agutis, coatimundi, and deer,†Cervantes says, counting on his hand. Olmos nods. These animals are typically eaten by jaguars. With prey species running around, there's a good chance that jaguars are running around here, too, even if Cervantes and his neighbors haven't seen them. Olmos has another lead. She's heard rumors about jaguars north of here, so she heads to the Sierra Llorona Highlands – a stretch of ranches and farms that lies between the two parks. Here the ranchers call out to each other among the rolling hills. On a clear day, you can see both the Caribbean to the north and the Panama Canal to the west, on a dirt road that winds through fields and forests.
OLMOS: Senor Illario?
DRAPKIN: Olmos stops along the road and asks people if they've seen animal tracks. She shows them pictures of four types of wildcat tracks. The men on the road point to the biggest paw marks on the page – the jaguar tracks. Yes. They've seen those tracks. Melba then shows them a picture of a jaguar. Have any of them actually seen one of these cats, she asks? No, but they've heard them. “The growls are so loud,†an old woman says, “she's woken up in the middle of the night.†Olmos is pretty sure that jaguars are using this area to move between the parks. But she's not done collecting all the data yet. When she is, all the information about habitat, prey items, jaguar tracks, and jaguar sightings will be sent to New York City. Scientists at Panthera will create a map of so-called “jaguar corridorsâ€. But even as Olmos discovers these jaguar corridors, they're already being severed by new human ones. A multi-lane highway is under construction right between the parks. It's not just the highway itself that poses a threat to jaguars, but the development it's likely to bring. More access brings more people, more houses, more stores.
RABINOWITZ: That will stop jaguars, because then you've got basically a city growing.
DRAPKIN: But Panthera's Alan Rabinowitz says saving jaguars in this area won't necessarily mean setting aside more parkland. Jaguars already tolerate some human development. Rabinowitz hopes that once his team finishes mapping the jaguar corridors, he can convince Panama to zone these areas for jaguar-friendly use: coffee farms, ranches, or even citrus groves.
RABINOWITZ: Things which can create a mosaic that allow a few individual jaguars to sneak their way by. It's ambitious but it is highly doable.
DRAPKIN: And Rabinowitz has the ambition to do this across the jaguar's entire range – from Mexico all the way to Argentina. Melva Olmos has done jaguar conservation across that range for 10 years – but she admits the work can be exasperating. The cats are so secretive; she's never actually seen one in the wild.
OLMOS: I haven't seen one. This is very frustrating for me.
DRAPKIN: So she sometimes visits them in captivity. Here in the zoo, near the entrance to Soberania National Park. The male jaguar stares from behind bars with yellow within yellow eyes. A few years ago, Olmos says, the zookeepers found jaguar tracks around this cage. Perhaps it was looking for a mate, the story goes. Olmos worries that if her efforts to protect jaguar corridors fail, many jaguars won't be able to find mates in the future. They'll be surrounded by too many people, and the parks they live in will be little more than large cages. For The World, I'm Julia Kumari Drapkin in Panama.
MULLINS: Julia put together a video that features those jaguars in Panama. If you like big cats, visit theworld.org.
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