GPS Tracking Being Used to Monitor the Endangered Jaguar
20 Apr 2017Jaguars are threatened with declining numbers. Their survival rate in Brazil is seriously endangered. And, scientists are finding signs that there are only a small number of them left in the biome; around 300 actually. Their virtual disappearance can be happening for a number of reasons.
The biggest reason is that there is only around seven percent of the Atlantic Rainforest left. This reduction in the Rainforest is resulting in the near extinction of this large feline in these regions and is only getting worse since the parts of the Atlantic Rainforests that are left are so fragmented that the animals have to expose themselves to various threats (humans for the most part) and travel far distances in their search of food.
Overhunting and habitat loss are forcing the jaguars to go on the run as well as being listed as endangered virtually everywhere they live. This is especially true with the cats in the U.S. and Mexico borderlands where there are only around 70 to 100 left.
Their movements are being tracked by researchers across all major biomes in Brazil through the use of GPS tracking technology in order to survey the cat’s movement parameters and home range in each biome.
This new GPS tracking research has been put in place to monitor 44 jaguars with GPS equipped collars from the year 1998 through 2016 across a number of Atlantic Rainforest regions in both Argentina and Brazil. This large study showed the jaguars had traveled the biggest ranges and because of this were the most likely to come in contact with humans. A gap in knowledge has been filled by this research of the habitats of the cats making the research essential for helping develop more conservation efforts that are efficient.
Research collected through the GPS system accounted for different movement and space use among individuals, regions, sex and habitat quality.
Around 80 percent of the collared cats were range resident with the males exhibited more directional movement paths, bigger home ranges and a trend showing larger distances traveled each day.
Scientists are able to gain important data on ecological processes by accurately understanding movement behavior and estimating home range and this collecting data and analysis process has a significant impact on jaguar and other species conservation.
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