Panama is a nation filled with luscious forests that host some of the world’s most amazing animals. And with the wide range of different ecosystems in Panama, from cloud forests to wetlands to mangroves to tropical rainforests, this country is one of the most biodiverse in the world despite being relatively small. The king of the Panamanian jungle, however, is undoubtedly the jaguar. They are the largest species of cat in the Americas, and the third largest in the world behind tigers and lions. Jaguars are the apex predators in their habitats, and hunt by stalking and ambushing their prey with great stealth. Their habitat extends north beyond Panama through Mexico to the southwestern regions of the United States and all the way down south to Paraguay and northern Argentina. Jaguars prefer moist, wooded tropical habitats where they can swim and hide behind foliage as they stalk their prey. The jaguars of Panama are not as large as those of the tropical wetlands of Brazil, where the largest recorded jaguars have been found, but they are certainly still some of the most impressive animals in the world. And while they are both magnificent creatures to behold and important components to the health of their ecosystems, their numbers are in decline largely due to the impacts of human beings. It would be a shame to see these beautiful beasts disappear from our world, and it is absolutely worth doing all that we can to ensure that that doesn’t happen. So, in this article, I will be discussing why the Panamanian jaguar is so important to the ecosystems of Panama, what threats the jaguar population in Panama is facing, and what can be done to ensure that the Panamanian jaguar does not vanish from our world entirely:
What makes jaguars so cool?
Jaguars are not only the third largest species of cat in the world and the apex predators in their ecosystems, they also have unique hunting techniques from other big cats. Unlike other big cats, jaguars will bite directly through the front of the skull of some of their prey, piercing the brain and killing the unsuspecting animal almost instantly. This technique is used primarily for mammals such as capybaras. For other kinds of prey, the jaguar will utilize the technique employed by most big cats, which involves a direct bite to the neck of their prey, immobilizing them. It has also been reported, especially with horses, that jaguars will place one paw on the back of the neck and one paw on the muzzle and twist the neck of their prey like something out of an old kung-fu movie. Pretty cool if you ask me. Their ability to use different hunting techniques for different types of prey, along with their lethal combination of size and stealth, make jaguars incredibly efficient hunting machines.
Because of their hunting prowess and place at the top of the food chain, the jaguar was and still is revered by many of the indigenous cultures of Central and South America. The Mayans believed that the jaguar facilitated communication between the realms of the living and the dead. They also saw jaguars as being their spiritual companions in the afterlife, and apparently saw them as companions in the living world as well, since jaguar bones have been found at Mayan burial sites indicating that they kept them as pets. In the Aztec culture, the jaguar was used as a symbol for a ruler or for a warrior. Jaguars still appear in Central and South American culture today, including the mural in Cacaxtla, Mexico pictured below. They are also the namesake of a British luxury car brand.
Why are jaguars so important to ecosystems?
Jaguars are a keystone species in their ecosystems which means that they are crucial to maintaining ecological balance within the regions they inhabit. As the apex predators, they regulate the populations of organisms lower on the food chain than themselves. For instance, one of the jaguar’s main food sources is the nine-banded armadillo. So what would happen if the jaguars disappeared and no longer hunted the armadillos? Well, armadillos eat earthworms, and with their predators gone, armadillo populations would grow, and those armadillos would eat more earthworms, and earthworms populations would drop. Maybe you think earthworms are slimy and gross and you could care less if there are less of them digging around. But earthworms are very important to the structure and nutrient levels of soil, and so they help make it possible for plants to grow. So without earthworms, there may be no pretty flowers or shady trees growing in an ecosystem, and there may be no earthworms without jaguars. This is just one example of the cascade of effects that the health of the jaguar population has on the rest of the ecosystem. While I think most people would agree that these magnificent animals are worth keeping around simply because they are natural marvels and they have as much right to live on Earth as us humans, we must also consider the potential consequences that would follow a major decrease in, or even extinction of, the global jaguar population. In Panama as well as all throughout the Central American continent, the jaguar population has been in steady decline. And at the present moment, the threats against them are outweighing the efforts to protect them.
What threats are jaguar populations facing?
Jaguars are listed as Near Threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. According to the IUCN’s framework, this means that jaguars are close to being at high risk of extinction in the near future. Unfortunately, the main reason that jaguar populations have been decreasing is human intervention. In the 1960s, humans were killing around 15,000 jaguars yearly in the Brazilian Amazon for their pelts and for sport. While thankfully the rate at which jaguars are dying has decreased dramatically since then, there are still several anthropogenic factors that are causing jaguars to disappear.
One major factor contributing to decreasing jaguar populations is poaching. Jaguar pelts fetch a hefty price on the black market, and have for centuries. Around the late 1960s and early 1970s, the jaguar fur trade is reported to have been at its height. In 1967, around 13,000 jaguar skins were supposedly traded internationally, primarily being sold by Brazil and bought by the U.S. and Germany. While regulations have been put in place that have reduced the prominence of the jaguar fur trade, black market trading of this animal’s skin is still a problem. And it is not just their skin that is traded illegally, but their teeth as well. Jaguar teeth are the most valuable part of the animal and are used for jewelry and for medicinal purposes in China. Chinese immigrants living in Central and South America are also reportedly large producers and consumers of a product called “jaguar paste” which is made by boiling down a jaguar’s entire body for seven days and is believed to cure a wide range of illnesses, though none of these effects have ever been proven. This black market has been historically poorly regulated and has resulted in a strong decline in the population of jaguars internationally.
The other major factor affecting jaguars is deforestation and the loss of habitat. As urban development continues throughout the range of the jaguar’s habitat, that habitat will continue to grow smaller and smaller. In fact, jaguar habitats have already been confined to much smaller areas than they once were. In Panama, jaguars can be found primarily in Darien National Park, La Amistad International Park, and Cerro Hoya National Park. While a fairly large number of jaguars still persist in these three places, it is very difficult to find them outside of these protected areas. Additionally, the wooded areas around these parks where jaguars once inhabited are growing smaller and smaller.
In 1981, Darien National Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site and so deforestation in this area for the most part came to a halt. However, the unprotected areas around the UNESCO World Heritage site, areas that are nonetheless jaguar habitats, are still being used for cattle ranching by the locals of this region. This has led to a major problem for ranchers with jaguars continually killing livestock. When a jaguar lives so close to a food source as plentiful as a cattle ranch, its diet begins to shift to consisting of mostly domestic livestock, which makes it extremely difficult for these cattle ranchers to make a living with all their livestock being killed. And, sadly quite often, the cattle ranchers will respond by killing the big cat. It was reported that around 230 jaguars had been killed by cattle ranchers between 1989 and 2014, which is a pretty high number when you consider how much jaguar populations have dwindled already.
The building of the Panama Canal has also taken a negative toll of the jaguar population by fragmenting its habitat, as it has with many other animals as well. Before the canal was constructed, jaguars could roam freely between east and west Panama, thus maintaining a healthy level of genetic variation throughout the entire population. But, when an animal’s habitat is fractured by an untraversable obstacle, such as the Panama Canal, the availability of different potential mates in the population decreases and the genetic pool shrinks, making the population less resilient. While this concept is a bit more difficult to understand, the takeaway is that it is bad to restrict the movement of jaguars across the range of their habitat because it makes their population genetically weaker.
What can we do to protect our jaguars?
Because the jaguar is an apex predator, the consequences of its disappearance could be catastrophic to the ecosystems in which it now lives. This is why it is extremely important to protect our jaguars and ensure that their populations persist into the future. Law enforcement efforts to combat illegal poaching of jaguars and illegal trade of jaguar products and body parts should be ramped up to control the black market that is causing jaguar populations to decline. We cannot allow these magnificent animals to go missing from our planet due to an economy driven by greed.
The governments of the Americas should designate more of the jaguar’s habitat as protected land to reduce the impacts of deforestation and interference with human settlements. Additionally, for the people who live and work in the areas bordering jaguar habitats, information about these big cats should be more widely distributed concerning the actual threat level of jaguar encounters, the behavioral patterns of jaguars, and how to properly protect livestock against attacks by jaguars. This way, we can reduce the number of jaguars being killed in response to livestock attacks and we can reduce the fear that people may have of these magnificent animals. Many people have an irrational fear of jaguars, when in reality a jaguar will flee or hide in a tree just at the sound of a human voice, and jaguar attacks on humans are extremely rare. Spreading understanding that we must share our world with jaguars and that they are not to be afraid of is a crucial step in conserving their populations.
In terms of ways that the average person can contribute to the efforts to protect the world’s jaguars, there are a number of ways you can get involved. The first is to spread awareness about the importance of protecting these incredible animals, which is precisely what I am trying to do with this article. I am not a scientist, a government official, or an employee at a conservation non-profit. I am simply trying to help inform people about jaguars because I find them interesting and would like to see that they continue to populate our world in the future. So write an article, post on social media, or just talk to someone about jaguars. Everything helps!
If you would like to make a monetary donation to a group that aids in jaguar conservation efforts, here are some of the groups that I recommend:
Wildlife Conservation Society
World Wildlife Fund
Society for the Preservation of Endangered Carnivores and their International Ecological Study