All tropical animals go in fear of him. He is a wild king whose lands have been reduced and who now lives in the last of the American continent’s virgin tropical forests. This fearsome feline, who over thousands of years has used the Isthmus of Panama as a natural bridge during its migration between North and South America, is watching his kingdom shrink as the last of Latin America’s pristine tropical forests are isolated and destroyed.
The American jaguar (Pantera onca) is the top predator of the Americas and still has a home in Panama. There are reports of resident populations in various parts of Panama’s network of protected areas, including the forests of Darien, Chagres and La Amistad, confirming that important communities of this big cat still exist in Panama. Provided that the advance of deforestation is halted, these ecosystems will continue to provide a secure source of sustenance as each of these predators needs an unbroken area of forest equivalent to seventy football pitches in which to hunt.
Rafael Samudio, president of The Panamanian Mastozoology Society, added: “Today, the jaguar only migrates within its local area. The original migrations between North and South America are a thing of the past, because there is data showing that something happened around one and a half million years ago when most of Central America’s jaguar population disappeared. Some people assume that this resulted from disease or climate change.” So if the protected areas continue to be managed with a high level of conservation and vigilance, we will manage to keep their neighborhood safe and the species will be viable in the long term.
But it isn’t just this big cat that is in danger. The planet’s biodiversity is under threat of mass extinction because of climate change, a boom in cultivation of crops for bio-diesel production and human population growth. Information produced by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) indicates that thousands of the region’s species will cease to exist if we continue with unsustainable patterns of consumption and the destruction of forests as a result of human activity. “The fact is that it would be quite feasible to go back to ensuring the conservation of these invaluable ecosystems and re-planting the planet. Our organization in Latin America and the Caribbean is promoting this objective, which is probably the best way that we can help mitigate this crisis”, concludes Rody Oñate, Regional Communications Director for The United Nations Environment Program’s regional office based in the City of Knowledge in Panama.
Meanwhile, this king of the tropical forests has found his last refuge in the luxuriant forests of Panama, his kingdom is shrinking and his subjects dwindling, he is managing not to disappear altogether.
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