These weasel-like small cats haven’t been documented in the country since 1986. A new study suggests it’s time to reintroduce them.
A jaguarini photographed in Belize in June 2022. Photo: © giana521 via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC)
A jaguarini cub photographed in Ecuador in May 2022. Photo © Cristopher Barreto via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC)
Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:
The elusive, secretive jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) is a small, bizarre-looking feline species, not much bigger than a house cat, with weasel-like features, short legs, and an extremely long tail. Native to South and Central America, its range once extended to the southern tip of Texas, but it hasn’t been officially observed in the Lone Star State since 1986. The last one we know of was killed that year by the world’s most fearsome predator: a car.
Texas wildlife officials still dutifully investigate every sighting, and to date they’ve debunked every one of them. The “jaguarundis” people think they saw, biologists explain, were simply house cats or other wild felids — or sometimes just squirrels — out stalking in the dark.
That hasn’t stopped people stopped looking for the jaguarundi in Texas or hoping to spot one. In fact, one group of scientists just finished an exhaustive, decades-long study seeking evidence of the species’ persistence at the northernmost edges of its range, which also extends south all the way to Argentina.
In Texas the camera traps caught images of a wide range of other carnivores, including ocelots, bobcats, coyotes and hog-nosed skunks — but not a single jaguarundi in 18 years.
Based on their thousands of photos and the lack of verifiable sightings, the researchers concluded that “the jaguarundi is likely extirpated from the United States.” They published their findings earlier this year in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
The 2013 plan called for closing those information gaps, as well as investigating whether jaguarundis could resettle Texas from Mexico or if the species would benefit from proactive reintroduction efforts.
The new study says it’s time to put that last option into action.
“We suggest,” the authors wrote, “that federal and state agencies follow recovery strategies as outlined in the Gulf Coast jaguarundi recovery plan. These recovery efforts include restoring, protecting and reconnecting habitat, public outreach and education, reducing risk of road mortality, and evaluating the feasibility of jaguarundi reintroduction into South Texas.”
That probably requires rethinking of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. The 2013 recovery plan acknowledged that “increased border monitoring associated with illegal immigration, and homeland security, may impact future jaguarundi recovery efforts” — and that was long before the Trump administration waived dozens of environmental laws to accelerate border-wall construction.
