Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Matt Clark, Southwest Representative 

Patagonia Mountains – rich habitat for wildlife in the southwest ©Matt Clark

If you are anything like me, you might get to feeling pessimistic sometimes because of all of the alarming news we hear about the growing extinction crisis, climate change and a plethora of other wildlife woes. The renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” Since Leopold’s day, science has deepened our understanding of these ecological wounds and their consequences for wildlife – and has also revealed promising solutions.

Though most understand the damage done when a species’ habitat is destroyed, we often overlook the damage that comes from breaking the habitat into smaller pieces or crisscrossing it with roads and other barriers. When native habitats become too small, isolated and fragmented, they can’t support healthy wildlife populations.

Here in Defenders’ Southwest office, we’ve partnered with the Wildlands Network and a dozen or more of North America’s most respected conservation organizations to protect, connect and restore a contiguous network of lands along the spine of the Rocky Mountains and associated ranges, basins, plateaus, and deserts – all the way from Alaska’s Brooks Range to the Mexican Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico. These habitats need to be stitched back together so that wildlife can survive in a crowded world, and can shift their ranges as climate change rapidly alters the environment.

A family of javelina trapped at the border fence that cuts across their habitat (©Matt Clark)

To bring attention to wildlife corridor conservation, outdoor adventurer John Davis is biking, hiking and paddling along a 5,000-mile journey from Mexico to Canada, highlighting the need for wildlife habitat and corridor protection on a local and international scale – a journey dubbed TrekWest. Along the way, John is pointing out projects by organizations, private landowners and decision-makers that have helped to protect or restore vital habitats and corridors. I joined John Davis and our local conservation partners on the trail for the second regional leg of his continental journey. We guided John to important places in the Sky Islands Ecoregion – one of Defenders’ focal landscapes – to highlight promising projects that aim to maintain and restore habitat connectivity.

While TrekWest is mostly about highlighting solutions and successes, we were also compelled to show John some of the obstacles to wildlife in the Sky Islands. We brought John to see the antithesis of habitat connectivity: the 20-foot-tall border wall that Customs and Border Protection has constructed along vast swaths of the border with Mexico, straight through prime wildlife habitat. Defenders led the charge against this massive project at the time, but sadly the construction continued without public input and via the waiving of important laws. On previous trips to the border, I have witnessed the wall’s effects on wildlife. I photographed a family of javelina (wild pigs) cut off from the Mexican part of their range, and have seen deer and mountain lions similarly stymied. Some of the more rugged, north/south wildlife corridors that span the border do not yet have walls constructed across them, and we hope they will never be built.

Jaguars like these are just beginning to make their way back into Arizona – but disconnected habitats make it a challenge.

Another threat we could not sugar-coat for John is a number of mining proposals in the region. We visited the site of the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, just south of Tucson. If this open pit mine proceeds despite strong local opposition and legal challenges, it would destroy and fragment habitat for a wide range of species, including the jaguar. We also brought John to the Patagonia Mountains (a crucial, cross-border mountain range) and showed him the site of the proposed “Wildcat” silver mine. If constructed, this would be the second largest silver mine in the world – and like Rosemont, it would destroy thousands of acres of habitat and sever its connections for many wildlife species including the endangered jaguar, ocelot, and lesser long-nosed bat and the threatened Mexican spotted owl. Defenders is working with partner organizations such as Sky Island Alliance and the Patagonia Area Resource Alliance to prevent this mine from becoming the newest ecological wound to the region.

On the positive side, I helped to guide John on a hike to tour a local wildlife linkage that connects the Santa Catalina Mountains to the Tortolita Mountains. The connection between these two habitats was severed by urban development and a heavily traveled state highway (SR 77). The Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, of which Defenders is an active member, has worked tirelessly with stakeholders to protect the threads of habitat that remain intact. The Coalition also helped convince the Regional Transportation Authority to build wildlife underpasses, and an ambitious overpass, to enable wildlife to pass safely across SR 77. Once built, these wildlife-dedicated structures will give deer, fox, coyote, bobcat, mountain lion and other wildlife a way to cross from one habitat to the next without putting themselves or drivers at risk.

The bridge over Davidson Canyon allows wildlife to cross under Interstate 10 (©Matt Clark)

Later, I met up with John and staff from Sky Island Alliance on a hike through Davidson Canyon, a crucial wildlife corridor that links the Rincon Mountains and Pima County’s Cienega Creek Natural Preserve with the Santa Rita Mountains. The canyon is particularly important because the highway’s bridge gives wildlife a place to safely cross beneath Interstate 10. We documented many tracks near the bridge left behind by roadrunner, opossum, fox, coyote, bobcat and cougar. Black bear have also been documented utilizing this corridor. Sky Island Alliance is working with the transportation department and the county to ensure that this corridor remains functional for the free-flow of wildlife movement. These are but a couple of shining examples of how we are collectively working together to ensure wildlife has room to roam.

I believe that the most important factor that has changed since Aldo Leopold’s time is that we are no longer alone as we face these ecological challenges. We are a part of a strong and growing network of well-informed, passionate people working together toward a common and noble cause: the conservation and restoration of our natural heritage. For me, connectivity conservation fuels the flame of hope. It is a way we can give wildlife a fighting chance to survive in an increasingly fragmented and warming world.

“Coast to Coast” is a summer blog series highlighting some of America’s most imperiled wildlife. By using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s new state-by-state endangered species map, we will tell  stories about native plants and animals in unique landscapes where Defenders will be focusing its conservation efforts in coming years.

The next stop on our trip around the U.S. is an area in the Southwest called the Sky Islands. The “islands” are actually scattered mountain peaks that rise above the rest of the desert landscape in the region, disconnected from the much larger mountains ranges to the north (the Rockies) and the South (Sierra Madres). Because of the sharp contrast between the arid lowlands and the forested mountains, these areas often become a critical refuge for rare wildlife.

Ocelots are one such species that rely on Sky Islands in Arizona for their survival. About twice the size of a house cat, the ocelot is a solitary and nocturnal animal. With a life span of up to seven years in the wild, they hunt prey small and large. Although sticking mostly to rabbits, rodents, lizards and medium–sized amphibians, this powerful predator can also take down animals three times its size. Their distinctive leopard-like stripes and spots help them elude predators as they take cover in trees and dense brush.

Most of the ocelot’s remaining territory lies in Mexico and covers a large swath of South America, but the northern tip of their range lies in southeast Arizona and southern Texas. Sightings are rare in the U.S. Only four have been officially documented in the last 50 years in Arizona, the most recent in July of 2011. Lucky for us, however, one of these sightings included the capture of amazing photos and video of the elusive big cat, courtesy of Arizona Fish & Game.

Watch as local ranchers relive the sight of a lifetime–an ocelot on their property:

While cute and cuddly-looking, the ocelot is still having a rough time. Facing the deadly duo of habitat loss and poaching, the cute cat has been listed as endangered through its entire range. The major conservation move has been to criminalize the taking of ocelots and the selling of their fur within the U.S., while encouraging protection of their habitat. Ocelots also have international protections under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). CITES protections prohibit international trade of these animals, which helps keep them alive throughout the Americas.

Ocelots aren’t the only critters hiding out in the Sky Islands of Arizona and New Mexico. They share their alpine refuge with jaguars, gray wolves, Sonoran pronghorn and many other imperiled plants and animals, but they all benefit from efforts to conserve this unique habitat.

Learn more about the ocelot from Defenders factsheet and our previous blog post.

An endangered ocelot has been caught on camera in Arizona for an astonishing second time this year.

You may have a better chance of sighting Bigfoot in Arizona’s wilds than this endangered big cat called an ocelot.

Since 2009, there have been around four ocelot sightings in the Grand Canyon State, including this rare photo taken by a remote camera trap on Wednesday.

That’s because these furtive felines prefer to doze the day away, and ambush prey—such as mice, rabbits, small deer and snakes—at night. But their elusive nature isn’t the only reason they’re tough to spot.

Documented to have occurred from Argentina to Arizona—and perhaps as far east as Arkansas and Louisiana—today ocelots in the United States are mainly found in southern Texas. Habitat loss to farming, combined with the fur and pet trades, has taken a heavy toll on ocelot populations in North America.

But do the two sightings in Arizona this year foreshadow a future comeback for the cat? Not exactly. Researchers will compare rosette spots—which, like finger prints, are unique to each individual—on the cat in the new photograph with an ocelot image taken in February to determine whether they are indeed different animals.

Meanwhile, obstacles to an ocelot rebound persist. Although the Endangered Species Act makes trapping and trading ocelots in the U.S. illegal, threats such as the U.S.-Mexico border wall and climate change present new challenges to recovery.

Related: More about ocelots on the blog.

But regardless of the results of the photo comparison, wildlife officials say we have a reason to celebrate.

“This photo either demonstrates the continued presence of the ocelot we photographed in February, or that of a new animal,” Eric Gardner with the Arizona Game and Fish Department said in a statement, “either of which is good news for ocelot conservation.”

The ocelot, a spotted feline not much larger than domestic cats, has been documented to occur across two continents — all the way from Argentina to Arizona.  In recent years, a series of verified ocelot occurrences have been confirmed only 30 miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border through field research conducted by Sky Island Alliance. And two verified sightings, as recently as 2009-2010, confirm that the Sonoran subspecies of ocelots still calls southern Arizona home, at least intermittently.  Yet, some have been too quick to dismiss the potentially crucial role Arizona may play for ocelot recovery and evolution.

As Defenders stated in recent comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on their draft ocelot recovery plan, considerations related to climate change and an increasingly impermeable and degraded international border call for the development of robust ocelot research, conservation and recovery strategies to include the northernmost portion of the ocelot’s historic and current range in southern Arizona.

The ocelot faces a host of threats to its very existence, including habitat loss and degradation, poaching, mounting border-related disturbances and barriers (e.g. walls), and more intense climate change-driven droughts (droughts have shown to significantly diminish reproductive success). The threat of intensified drought in northern Sonora, as some climate change models predict will occur, may necessitate a northward range shift into Arizona and other Southwestern U.S. states  (Last month, High Country News published a great article on this and other ocelot issues).

Ocelots can be hard to find in the wild. They’re nocturnal by nature, and spend much of their time in very dense and thorny vegetation, so it’s not surprising that people don’t report seeing ocelots very often, even where they do exist in relative abundance.

The ocelot faces a host of threats to its very existence, including habitat loss and degradation, poaching, mounting border-related disturbances and barriers and more intense climate change-driven droughts.

While there’s no evidence that the Sonoran subspecies of ocelot has bred north of the US – Mexico border in recent times, we can’t say for certain that it hasn’t either, because the government and the scientific community have failed to conduct a systematic survey north of the border for this rare and elusive species.

Unlike the well-studied and highly managed ocelots in south Texas, the ocelot population in the Mexican state of Sonora is very poorly studied. Only one effort to estimate the population’s size has been made, and that study (Lopez Gonzales et al., 2003) was based on very limited data (only 36 records). The study estimated that some 2,025 ocelots – plus or minus 675 cats – may live in the northern Sierra Madre. Unfortunately, the 2003 study did not include southern Arizona, but it did recognize the vital and growing importance of the ocelot’s northermost habitats: “As noted for other threatened species, the most distant portions of species’ distributions have been the last refuge for their survival, and this may also be the case for the future of the ocelot in North America.”

Male ocelots have been well-documented to roam no more than 5-25 kilometers in search of new territories and mates.  So the fact that a wild male ocelot was recently struck and killed by a vehicle as far north as Globe, Arizona (150 km north of the Arizona/Mexico border) suggests that a population of breeding ocelots may exist near, or even north of, the political dividing line we call the border. And even if ocelots are not now breeding in Arizona, there may still be ample habitat to support a breeding population in the future.

Now more than ever, conservation planning for the ocelot should be guided by science, not politics or special interests.  The potential contribution that southern Arizona could make to the future recovery of the ocelot should not be underestimated or downplayed, and in fact we argue, it should be central to the development of a forward-thinking and successful recovery vision for the ocelot.