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Curious Cat
Image courtesy Panthera
A jaguar cub peers into a camera trap while another jaguar looks on in a Colombian oil palm plantation in April.
Taken in the Magdalena River Valley (map), the surprising picture is among the first photographic evidence that the big cats will venture onto oil palm farms, a growing type of agriculture in South America and Asia.
Such farms are the "main cause of habitat transformation, fragmentation, and loss" for jaguars, said Esteban Payan, director of the Northern South America Jaguar Program for Panthera, a big-cat conservation group that formed a partnership with the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative earlier this year. (National Geographic News is a division of the Society.)
Jaguars currently live in isolated populations scattered across North and South America, which is part of the reason the species is listed as "near threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. (See a map of jaguar populations.)
A proposed wildlife corridor stretching from Argentina to Mexico could link jaguar habitats, but it would have to pass through farms and other human-dominated landscapes. Conservationists wanted to know if jaguars would use the agricultural parts of the corridor—hence the Colombian camera traps. (Read "Path of the Jaguar" in National Geographic magazine.)
"I thought I'd be lucky if I caught a glimpse of a fleeting jaguar in the plantation," Payan said. Instead the pictures revealed several of the big cats, including a few cubs.
"In seven years of camera trapping, I have never photographed jaguar cubs," he added. "When I opened the file ... it blew me away."
—Christine Dell'Amore
Published June 18, 2012
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Cat on the Move
Image courtesy Panthera
A male jaguar is seen prowling an oil palm plantation in Colombia. In addition to habitat loss, the big cats are declining as a result of oil mining and hunting, often in retaliation for killing livestock, Payan said.
The new photos "represent the first step toward understanding how jaguars cope with [agricultural] ecosystems in unprotected lands," he added.
(Related pictures: "Seven Cat Species Found in One Forest—A Record.")
Published June 18, 2012
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Sniffing out the Scene
Image courtesy Panthera
A jaguar mother and her two cubs (the tail of the second is pictured at right) seemed "calm, playful, and healthy" on an oil palm plantation, Payan said.
Usually, just one jaguar cub survives in a litter, so seeing two cubs alive and well is "heartwarming," he said. (Take a big cats quiz.)
However, it's "important to note" that the camera traps were located on the plantation border, next to a well-preserved forest.
"Confirming the presence of these jaguars does not mean they are living within the plantation, or that such plantations represent sufficient jaguar habitat," he cautioned.
(See more jaguar pictures.)
Published June 18, 2012
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Plantation Home?
Image courtesy Panthera
The new jaguar pictures—including the one of a male cat seen above—"open up a whole new agenda of research" into how jaguars tolerate agriculture, Payan said.
Among Payan's questions: "How big of a plantation will they tolerate? What type of harvesting methods do not drive them away? Do we always need forests bordering the plantations? What on earth are they eating inside the plantations?"
(See jaguar picture: "First Seen in Central Mexico Since 1900.")
Published June 18, 2012
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Oil Palm Trees
Photograph by Alejandra Parra, Bloomberg/Getty Images
Oil palm trees are pictured on a plantation in Santander, Colombia, in 2010.
An increasing demand for oil palm—used mostly for domestic products and biodiesel—has already transformed about a million acres (430,000 hectares) of Colombian forest into farmland, and that's expected to grow to 1.8 million acres (750,000 hectares) by 2020, Payan said.
As for how plantation owners feel about big cats roaming their properties, Payan claims they "love it."
"Owners and management are asking for posters to pin up in the plantation offices."
Published June 18, 2012
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Next: Ten Most Threatened Forests
Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic
Published June 18, 2012
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