Is the Jaguar the next “experimental, non-essential” endangered species?
The United States and the Fish and Wildlife Service just announced it was going to stall another year before coming up with a plan to save the jaguar. The plan to help them come back by protecting some critical habitat is stirring up trouble among the usual suspects (cattlemen) and someone you wouldn’t suspect (a jaguar biologist). The jaguar (Panthera onca) has been on the endangered species list since 1972, but only as a foreign species. So that’s meant the FWS hasn’t had to even think about it. The FWS itself says the spotted cat used to live in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and maybe Lousiana. But it took the Center for Biological Diversity continually suing them for 13 years to get them to come up with a plan to bring them back. The FWS lost the court battle in 2009. In January 2010 it came back and said, yes, we think it would be “prudent” to set up a critical habitat. But, we need a year to figure out where it will be. And now they’ve said, um, we need one more year. Re
