The northern population of the jaguar is certainly threatened by the construction of a border fence but the problem is much deeper. The border fence represents poor planning and policy on part of the US government. Additionally, the border fence represents habitat degradation loss and fragmentation, which slowly degrades nature, her ecosystems and the complex relationships amongst organisms. The balance within nature becomes unbalanced when habitat degradation loss and fragmentation occurs.
Biological laws do not stop with political borders hence nature does not abide by political borders. Nature is complex. Certainly, the laws of thermodynamics do not stop with political borders as well. In fact, governmental policy like the construction of a border fence contributes to the entropy within natural systems. This entropy affects human civilization as well since we depend on the ability to commodify nature. As a result, if we preserve nature wisely we can collect on the interest created from wise environmental policies. Nature preservation also provides an spiritual like experience for some people that is needed and is hard to quantify.
The political ecology of Arizona and its landscape will hurt the jaguars. As an example, imagine a 100-acre wood surround by a city. In the 100-acre wood, one may find living things like grasses, trees, squirrels, a few deer amongst small birds and reptiles and maybe even some aquatic species. However, the disconnected and fragmented ecosystem is isolated somewhat like an island and the exchange of genetic material with individuals outside the 100-acre wood is almost impossible or difficult for some animal groups unless humans assist. Before fragmentation, this 100-acre wood was much larger and other animals such as large carnivores and herbivores roamed through a much larger area. These large carnivores and herbivores could never return and live in the present day 100-acre wood because the land is too small to support a viable population of many types of species. Additionally, within the 100-acre wood complex relationships were destroyed and what now appears to be a healthy 100-acre wood to go hiking through is really a sickened ecosystem socially constructed by humans.
This fragmentation and slow death of forests are happening all over the world as we continue to exacerbate the situation further in some areas. However, one remedy is to connect fragmented land through corridors so that genetic material may be exchanged and species requiring larger areas to roam can do so. Another remedy is abiding by environmental laws and policy that benefit the environment and not special interests. From CNN.com:
Last month the Department of Homeland Security waived 30 environmental laws to finish 470 miles of the fence by the end of the year.Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress that the agency continues to talk to some 600 landowners along the border to get their input. But in order to comply with the congressional mandate, he said, there is no time to deal with “unnecessary delays caused by administrative processes or potential litigation.”
“We are currently in a lawless situation at the border,” says Chertoff. “I feel an urgency to get this tactical infrastructure in. And although we’re going to be respectful of the environment, we’re going to be expeditious.”
Two environmental groups, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, have filed appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming the waivers are unconstitutional and set a dangerous precedent.
“National security and environmental protection do not have to be at odds with each other,” says Defenders of Wildlife spokesman Matt Clark. “If we can drop this arbitrary deadline for constructing the fence and go through the proper procedures, then there are inevitably ways to minimize environmental impact, but as it is now it’s throwing all of those laws out the window.”
On the Net: Borderlands Jaguar
On the Net: Northern Jaguar Project – A Binational Effort to Save the North American Jaguars
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http://swjags.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/macho-b-back-in-az/
Macho B back in AZ!
By swjags
December, 2008
Here’s an early Christmas present for jaguar lovers: after a long absence Macho B has been seen again in Arizona!I had feared that Chertoff’s Folly had ruined the big guy’s chances in the US, but I’m happy to say I was wrong. But there’s no time for complacency; we need to keep pushing for wild cats and wild lands! Anyway, here’s a informative update from Emil McCain of the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project:
Arizona jaguar still roams north of the U.S./Mexico border fence: an update from the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project.
Emil B. McCain, Janay Brun, and Jack L. and Anna Mary Childs
Perhaps the most photographed and widely-known wild jaguar ever was recently caught on film again in southern Arizona. After more than one year since the last photograph of a jaguar was taken in the U.S., the jaguar commonly known as Macho B, has again passed in front of the trail cameras monitored by the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project. Macho B was first photographed as a young adult (≥2-3 years old) in August 1996 by hunters Jack Childs and Matt Colvin (Childs 1998). He has since been photographed dozens of times by the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project’s camera monitoring effort along the U.S./Mexico border between 2004 and 2007 (McCain and Childs 2008). Macho B was last photographed in July of 2007, at which time he was at least 13-14 years old, a very respectable age for any wild jaguar. After more than one year with no new photographs, it became widely assumed that Macho B was no longer with us. Many believed that he had either died of old age, been killed or had been physically kept out of the U.S. study area by the various border security infrastructures. Well, Macho B has once again surprised us all.
At dawn on 29 July 2008, Macho B passed by a camera hidden in a remote canyon some 20 miles from the Mexico border. He was traveling to the south. Four days later, on 2 August 2008, and nine miles further south, Macho B passed by another one of our trail cameras. Thick and robust in the photographs, he appeared healthy and in good shape. He was at least 14-15 years old as of August 2008.
Where has he been all this time and where is he headed next? We wish we knew. We assume that we would have had some record of him during the past year if he was within the study area. We have maintained continuous wide-spread monitoring with trail cameras and track/scat surveys (Henschel and Ray 2003, McCain and Childs 2008) throughout the expansive range that Macho B had used over the previous several years. The previous jaguar data from our study have generally come in bursts, with multiple data points recorded during a given time period, followed by a period of absence before the next burst (McCain and Childs 2008). This pattern most likely reflects a relatively high detection probability when a jaguar is within the study area. It is possible that long periods with no detections signify that no jaguar is present within the area surveyed during that time. So the question remains, where was Macho B for the past year? Many may argue that he may have been in Mexico. However, the fact is that when last photographed in 2007, he was some 50 miles north of the US/Mexico border, and the two new photographs show him well north of the border, traveling from some unknown northern area. So far, we have been able to survey only twelve percent of the area in Arizona that, according to confirmed jaguar records from the last 100 years, as well as multiple habitat attributes, contains potentially suitable jaguar habitat (Hatten et al. 2005). There is more unsurveyed jaguar habitat in New Mexico, including two mountain ranges where two different jaguars have been seen in the past dozen years (Glenn 1996, Glenn pers. comm. 2006). We have no idea where Macho B has been or where he may be headed next. We also have no idea how many other jaguars may be out there that, like Macho B, may have slipped through the desert’s shadows, and avoided being seen or detected by anyone except for our hidden cameras.