Jaguar caught on camera in Southern Arizona's Huachuca Mountains

A jaguar has been caught on camera in the Huachuca Mountains twice so far this year, marking the first confirmed sightings of the endangered cat species since 2017 in the range about 90 miles southeast of Tucson.

The images of a male jaguar were captured between March and May on a remote camera or cameras operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity announced Wednesday.

Wildlife officials said it could be a new cat, previously undetected north of the border, or it could be a jaguar nicknamed Sombra that has been caught on camera in the Chiricahua Mountains dozens of times over the past seven years.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s online database of jaguar sightings, the images are too blurry to positively identify the animal based on its distinctive pattern of spots.

“We’ve got a mystery cat,” said Russ McSpadden, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “For me, every sighting of a jaguar is a moment to celebrate.”

The only other large spotted cat detected in the Huachuca range was a young male nicknamed Yo’oko, the Yaqui word for jaguar, by students at Hiaki High School in Tucson.

McSpadden said Yo’oko was caught on camera in the mountains west of Sierra Vista in 2016 and 2017 before turning up dead in Sonora, Mexico, in 2018.

Seven adult male jaguars have been documented in the Southwestern U.S. since 1996, including five in Arizona, one in New Mexico and one seen in both states. No females have been documented in the U.S. since an Arizona hunter killed one in the White Mountains in 1963.

The most recent jaguar images from the Huachucas were captured on March 22 and an unknown date in either April or May, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service database.

McSpadden said it’s unclear if the jaguar was photographed by a single CBP camera or multiple cameras at different locations.

The images have not been released to the public, but they have been examined by officials from the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

“We have seen the imagery but cannot tell whether or not it is a new individual or the jaguar that has been in the Chiricahua Mountains area since 2016,” said department spokesman Mark Hart. “That jaguar was last observed by trail cam there in October.”

McSpadden said it’s “definitely a possibility” that Sombra decided to brave the roughly 50 miles of highways and open desert to get from the Chiricahuas to the Huachucas. But it’s also possible that a young male jaguar ventured north into the range after being chased out of another cat’s territory in Mexico.

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“They’re really wide-ranging. They’re really elusive,” he said. “And good jaguar habitat is good jaguar habitat. If the habitat in the Huachucas was good enough for Yo’oko, some other cat is going to find it.”

McSpadden also dangled another tantalizing possibility: Perhaps the jaguar seen earlier this year in the Huachuca Mountains is the famed El Jefe, back from his long sojourn to Mexico.

That adult male was caught on camera more than 100 times between 2012 and 2015 in the Santa Rita and Whetstone mountains outside of Tucson. Six years later, El Jefe turned up in an undisclosed mountain range in Central Sonora, more than 100 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico and 120 miles south of the Santa Ritas.

Though El Jefe would be an old cat by now, McSpadden said, maybe he decided to return to his former territory to live out his retirement.

“But that’s just speculation,” he said.

Jaguars are the largest cats in the Americas. They once ranged as far north as Colorado and Northern California and as far east as Louisiana, but they had been all but wiped out in the U.S. by the middle of the 20th century.

After legal action by the Center for Biological Diversity, the jaguar was added to the Endangered Species List in 1997. Last year, the center petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to dramatically expand the cat’s federally designated critical habitat, which is limited to areas south of Interstate 10 through Southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Service officials have said the so-called “sky island” mountain ranges in that area are only capable of supporting about six jaguars.

McSpadden said the timing of these most recent sightings is also significant.

Just a few months earlier, the southern slopes of the Huachuca Mountains were blocked by stacks of shipping containers, as former Gov. Doug Ducey’s $176 million border barrier was hastily thrown up and then taken back down.

“It’s exciting that the last of the containers was removed by the last day of January, and, not long after, a jaguar appears in the Huachucas,” McSpadden said.