Jaguar sighting in Honduras

A camera trap photographed a young male jaguar in Honduras’ Sierra del Merendón on February 6, the first recorded sighting there in a decade. (aol.com) The cat was photographed high in the Merendón range, where cloud forest blankets the mountains on the Honduras-Guatemala border. Panthera Honduras said the image came from its monitoring work in the region. (aol.com) (panthera.org) A “cloud jaguar” is not a separate species. It is a nickname conservationists use for a jaguar moving through high-elevation cloud forest instead of the lower, hotter forests more people associate with the animal. (cnn.com) (catsg.org) Jaguars need large connected territories, and Merendón sits inside a corridor that links habitat across Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Panthera said some Honduran protected areas function as “stepping stones” for dispersing cats moving between larger populations. (panthera.org 1) (panthera.org 2) That geography has been under pressure for years. Rainforest Trust said coffee and cardamom plantations and cattle ranching have severely fragmented habitat in the Merendón corridor. (rainforesttrust.org) Forest loss has been heavy at the national level too. Global Forest Watch data cited in reporting on the sighting said Honduras lost 1.5 million hectares of tree cover from 2001 to 2024, equal to 19% of its total, with permanent agriculture and grazing land the main drivers. (nz.news.yahoo.com) (globalforestwatch.org) Conservation groups have been trying to hold the corridor together with more patrols and monitoring. Panthera said it has worked in Honduras since 2009, mapped the country’s jaguar corridor with interviews and genetic samples, and expanded ranger patrols and anti-poaching monitoring in key areas. (panthera.org 1) (panthera.org 2) In Cusuco National Park, part of the same mountain system, Panthera said annual patrol distance rose from 239 kilometers in 2015 to 3,662 kilometers in 2021. The group said it has also used remote sound recorders since 2018 to detect gunshots in protected forest. (panthera.org) The Merendón sighting does not prove a large resident population lives there now. It does show at least one young male is still moving through a corridor conservationists have spent years trying to keep open. (cnn.com) (panthera.org)