Historically, the jaguar roamed freely from Argentina to the southern US—across tropical forests, savannas, wetlands, and mountain ranges. But core populations now exist mainly in a few strongholds, including the Amazon region and the Pantanal wetland, linked by a vast mosaic of biological corridors that are vital to their survival.
Because it sits at the top of the food chain and travels so widely, the jaguar is an “umbrella species”: Conservation of the jaguar positively affects the whole ecosystem and the other species in it. “If we have healthy jaguar populations, then it’s likely that all biodiversity is healthy, because the prey and the forest have to be healthy for jaguars to survive,” says Jordi Surkin, director of conservation at WWF-Bolivia.
In a way, jaguars are an umbrella species for humans as well. Today, the jaguar’s range not only includes nearly 28% of the world’s biodiversity but provides 53 million people with ecosystem services, including freshwater, commercial fisheries, clean air, and crop pollination. In Brazil alone, it’s estimated that these environmental services generate more than US$4 billion annually.
But despite its cultural and ecological significance, the species is at risk. More than half of the jaguar’s original range has been lost, while the rest has become highly fragmented. In the last 20 years, rising global appetites for soy and beef—two of the biggest drivers of agricultural expansion in South America—have fueled a rapid, substantial clearing of the continent’s forests that has pushed jaguars into ever-smaller, isolated patches of land.
The Atlantic Forest, which encompasses Misiones and stretches from Brazil’s Atlantic coastline into Paraguay and Argentina, has been particularly hard hit. Centuries ago, the jaguar padded through the entire expanse—more than 500,000 square miles—of this vast region. But about 85% of jaguar habitat here has disappeared, and by 2016 fewer than 300 individuals occupied less than 4% of the forest; just three isolated pockets had jaguar populations larger than 50.
In Brazil and Bolivia, large-scale wildfires over the past two years have also decimated jaguar habitats and prey populations, and an increasing demand for jaguar parts—furs and fangs especially—has driven a recent surge in poaching for the illegal wildlife trade. At the same time, hunting has diminished the jaguar’s prey in some places, and as the cats turn to livestock for easy meals, they’re often killed in retaliation.
“When jaguar habitat is fragmented and people move into that habitat, then jaguars may get used to going after cattle—and also may lack other options. That’s when we start to see human-wildlife conflicts,” explains Surkin.