On the trail of the jaguar: Population growth a success in Sonora. Can the U.S. do the same?

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SAHUARIPA, SONORA — Miguel Gómez hovers his hands over the deep nail-scrapes on the fallen palm trunk. The nail-dragged furrows were etched into the wood by a jaguar. Quietly, patiently, Gómez studies the scratch marks. And then — nails down, fingers spread — he mimics the motion the cat made on the trunk.

Gómez has followed jaguar tracks, investigated their kill sites, heard them roar, and — on remote trail cameras — he’s captured them hundreds of times. But, outside of captivity, he’s never seen a living jaguar. “They’re smart,” Gómez said. “They know that it’s best for them to stay away from humans.”

As a wildlife biologist specializing in jaguars for 18 years, Gómez has spent the last 15 years at the Northern Jaguar Reserve in the southeastern part of the Mexican state of Sonora. Currently, at least a dozen jaguars, including two cubs and five or six females prowl the protected 56,000 acres managed by the Northern Jaguar Project.

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Miguel Gómez, wildlife biologist for The Northern Jaguar Project, in a remote mountain canyon hours outside of Sahuaripa, Sonora, México on Jan. 24, 2024. Credit: John Washington

Gómez works in the remote and jagged Zetasora mountains and the surrounding canyons of the Sierra Madre mountain chain in eastern Sonora. It’s a region where jaguars have roamed for thousands of years. They were hunted to the brink of extinction but now, thanks to the work of Gómez and others at the Northern Jaguar Project, there are about a dozen regular jaguars living in or near the reserve. That work, which began in 2002, shows ranchers it’s in their interest to protect instead of hunt the jaguar, and is changing the way people think of both jaguars and the natural environment…

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