WWF - Expedition Diary - Jaguar Collaring - In Search of Jaguars: An Amazon Tail

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Expedition Diary - Jaguar Collaring

In Search of Jaguars: An Amazon Tail

Deep in the heart of the Amazon roam jaguars, pumas and other creatures of the jungle. Rodrigo Donadi of WWF’s AREAS Amazonia project has been tracking them for almost two years. He’s felt the bone-rattling sound of a jaguar’s roar and seen herds of wild pigs stampeding through the lush rain forest. Join him in the Amazon as he comes face to face with the jaguar – king of the jungle.

That first night there was excitement in the air but we knew from experience that 'nobody ever catches anything the first night.'

Nonetheless, the next morning everyone left in good spirits and headed out to check the traps. As we pull up to our first trap we let Duggins out of the boat since it is trapper tradition that the principal trapper checks the traps first. While Duggins checked we stayed on the boat talking about all the secrets he had shared with us, like how to properly set and camouflage the snares and other things I cannot reveal…after all they are secrets!

We were so deep in conversation that we did not see Duggins running out of the underbrush in his bright red shirt, jumping up and down and giving us the double thumbs up. He was too far away to hear but the message was unmistakably clear: we had a jaguar in our first trap on our first night – and he was a big one!