indo-asian news service
New Delhi, August 24: Satellite collars, though possibly detrimental to their daily activities, can save the wild cats from being killed by humans, international big cat biologists say.
Domestic animals are easy prey for a carnivore. Attacks on them often lead to retaliation the world over by locals. “While documenting the diets of puma and jaguar using GPS (global positioning system) collars, we were notified many times that ‘I would have killed a jaguar I observed, but I was afraid it may have had a GPS collar on it’,” Ron Thompson and Ivonne Cassaigne, North America’s most experienced big cat biologists, said.
Although satellite GPS collars are considered by many as being detrimental to an animal’s daily activities, such comments from livestock operators are indicative that GPS collars can and do save jaguars, they said. Thompson is the founder of Primero Conservation.org and focuses on human-caused mortality of jaguars and pumas (mountain lions) in Mexico.
According to him, GPS at a minimum can provide an investigative tool needed in any attempt to prosecute a person suspected of killing a jaguar. Thompson is a co-author of a study titled “The Decline of a Jaguar (Panthera onca) Subpopulation in Sonora Mexico” that recommends that as many jaguars as possible be collared in Sonora and that the reasons for this be made public in the surrounding communities where jaguars are extant.
This collaring effort should be combined with educational programmes and monitoring of the wild animals by hiring private security guards. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the jaguar is considered near-threatened across its range in the Americas.
The study holds lessons for India, where the mortality of wild animals, especially tigers and leopards, is common. Tiger deaths have steadily gone up in India in recent years. At least 67 have died this year — many as a result of conflict with humans, including poachers, a BBC report said last month.
Thompson, Cassaigne and four other researchers, who have been monitoring jaguars for almost a decade, identified 26 in northwestern Sonora during the study that began in 2009. Five to 10 jaguars were present at any point in time within the study area from May 2009 to March 2012.
