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Protecting the world's northernmost jaguars…

Northern Jaguar Project Wildcat Photo-Survey Contest

Northern Jaguar Project and Naturalia, in partnership with Defenders of Wildlife, have initiated a collaborative program with ranchers living in jaguar country. The Wildcat Photo-Survey Contest offers incentives to conserve area wildlife and provides indirect compensation for cattle losses due to jaguar and puma predation.

The goal of the Photo-Survey Contest is to immediately reduce the high rate of jaguar mortality while simultaneously gaining valuable information on jaguar ecology and building key relationships that help ensure their survival and recovery.

The Photo-Survey Contest takes place on nine large, private cattle ranches surrounding the Northern Jaguar Reserve. Once each month a vaquero, trained and employed by the Project, visits each of the participating ranches and places remote, motion-triggered cameras in areas where cats are likely to be present. The Project develops the film and awards participating ranchers between $50 to $300 for pictures of jaguars, pumas, ocelots and bobcats obtained on their ranches. In return, participating ranchers sign a contract agreeing to protect these cats – and all wildlife – within their ranches and to end predator killing, including the use of traps, poisons and hounds. The contract also allows project staff to randomly visit participating ranches to ensure compliance.

The Wildcat Photo-Survey Contest promotes conservation in several ways, including (1) providing indirect compensation for livestock losses, (2) building relationships and trust with ranchers and vaqueros in the vicinity of the Northern Jaguar Reserve, (3) providing a financial incentive to keep cats alive, (4) providing access to private ranches to gather information to help guide future research and conservation projects, and (5) providing a positive, high-profile awareness of the northern jaguar. The Wildcat Photo-Survey Contest is already helping to build relationships and improve local perspectives on jaguars, and wildlife conservation in general.

In addition to photos of pumas, ocelots and bobcats, the Contest has also yielded dozens of pictures of other wildlife species, including deer, javelina, coati, squirrels, lagomorphs, skunks, coyotes and foxes, supporting the idea that prey base in this region can sustain modest numbers of jaguars.

The Photo-Survey Contest is in its earliest stages, but we are pleased with progress so far – particularly with the number of hectares that are enrolled because this represents areas in which jaguars are much safer from poaching than they had been before the Contest. The public enthusiasm for the Contest, and the growing public support for jaguars is particularly promising. Late each year, the Project will oversee a local Jaguar Festival, during which additional prizes for camera contest photos – most skunks or funniest photo, for example – will be awarded and participating ranchers will be recognized as conservation heroes. Ancillary prizes will be given to the local schools.

As we hoped and predicted, a self-policing atmosphere is beginning to develop and the Project is receiving reports from ranchers participating in the Wildcat Photo-Survey Contest about other ranchers who are killing jaguars. Whether these reports are motivated by a conservation ethic or financial self-interest is irrelevant — it is becoming unacceptable to kill jaguars in the region.