First Mirador Jaguar Population and Density Study with Calakmul, Mexico

Focused on the Mirador Basin straddling Guatemala and Mexico, the Mirador Jaguar Team will spend the next year placing camera traps across 500 square kilometers (50,000 ha) of Mirador’s seven tropical forests types both deep in the park and along the park borders to obtain the data.

Illegal hunting of jaguar and their prey is a major threat to the survival of this keystone species.  As well, habitat loss is pressuring jaguar into smaller and smaller areas. Over 80% of the Maya Biosphere Reserve has been lost in just 20 years.

With the scientific support of Dr. Gerardo Ceballos of UNAM Mexico, a leading expert on jaguars, and collaboration with CECON and University of San Carlos, Global Conservation is launching the first ever transnational jaguar population study of the Mirador-Calakmul Biosphere.

A previous short-term study of one area of the the Mirador Basin by Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in 2008 found Mirador to have the highest density of jaguars in Latin America, over twice the density found in the Amazon (7.2 animals in 100 square kilometers (equal 10,000 ha). This last baseline attempt at jaguar populations and density was over ten years ago.

Massive loss of habitat across Mesoamerica, combined with hunting and wildlife poaching for profits, is putting major pressure on the jaguar’s survival.  This multi-year scientific study will  obtain reliable and comparable density estimates key to monitoring wildlife populations across space and time. For the first time in Guatemala and in the Maya Biosphere, we will have the data to accurately detect jaguar population declines, estimate threats, and implement the appropriate conservation interventions needed.

Large carnivores are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss and extinction because they occur at low densities, have slow population growth rates, require large areas and sufficient prey.

Understanding jaguar densities and population distribution enables better planning of their conservation inside and outside protected areas.

Jaguars are a species especially important for conservation because they are suffering large population declines and are a keystone species in their ecosystems along with tapir, other forest cats and critical avian species in Mirador like Harpy Eagles, Eagle Hawks and Orange-breasted Falcons.