World Wildlife Fund

© WWF / Paloma Alcazar

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.

Part 1: A Dream Come True | Part 2: River Ride | Part 3: Forest Friends | Part 4: Platforms and Peccaries | Part 5: Tigers in the Amazon? | Part 6: A Trapper's Call | Part 7: Success on the First Try! | Part 8: Face to Face with a King | Part 9: Darting Tankar | Part 10: Tracking in the Jungle | Part 11:
Ghost of the Amazon | Part 12: Afterthoughts

It was believed that pumas stayed away from rivers and other low-lying ground because they were displaced by bigger and stronger jaguars. Now we have preliminary data showing that three male pumas are staying close to the river for the majority of the time. This data is the first of its kind, since no one has been able to track wild pumas in the Amazon.
© WWF / Rodrigo Donadi

After six long, exhausting weeks of catching cats, setting and checking traps and spending all day in the boats under the hot sun it was finally time for Duggins to return to the U.S. As he turned towards us at the airport he said “Don’t get ’at” which in trapper’s lexicon simply means “don’t get eaten,” and is a traditional way of saying goodbye.

Our first capture without Duggins was a male puma about four years old, and was also my first time seeing and darting a wild puma. We named our newly collared feline Cachi, and will radio track him via airplane until it’s time to recover his collar and see what the GPS data reveals. Up until now pumas had been so elusive and so seldom seen that they were referred to as the Ghost of the Amazon, however, the data we are collecting is already giving us new insights about their lives.

Our luck continued with one more male puma two days after Cachi’s capture, followed by a bit of dry spell. Ten days later we  caught Hercules – a humongous 190-pound male jaguar – our biggest to date.

By now we were running into September and getting close to the end of the trapping season. But suddenly the cats started coming in like never before and we captured eight of them in September alone! In the end, the AREAS Amazonia project has been able to monitor 15 felines: four female jaguars, eight male jaguars, and three male pumas. We are now on our way towards a better understanding of their life cycles and habitat needs so that we can protect them over the long term.