A Chiricahua Mountains jaguar Thursday became the second wild jaguar in Southern Arizona to enter the video world.
The Center for Biological Diversity released a video showing the nocturnal animal first blinking a couple of times, turning his head back and forth and finally walking away from the camera. Most of the big cat's 15 seconds on camera show his head and upper body, but during the last few seconds, the animal's hind area appears.
The video, shot in late June, also has shots of an adult and baby black bear, a deer, a mountain lion and a coati, covering 38 seconds total. The jaguar is apparently the same animal as the one photographed last November in the neighboring Dos Cabezas Mountains to the north, the center said.
Both that photo and the video were shot using cameras on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land and the spot patterns from each one matched, said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate for the center.
This jaguar video comes about 19 months after the center released a 41-second video of a male jaguar in the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of Tucson. That jaguar, named El Jefe by students at Felizardo Valencia Middle School, hasn't been photographed or videotaped since September 2015.
The Chiricahuas jaguar was recently named Sombra by students at the Paolo Freire Freedom School, a public charter school with campuses in the University of Arizona area and downtown Tucson.
One reason the center is releasing jaguar videos is that "People are just thrilled to know that these beautiful cats are out there in their backyard," Serraglio said. "it’s important that people take pride in that and develop the political will to really protect these animals.
"When people see thee thrilling images, it inevitably builds support for conservation. Every time we put out these video people say, 'Gee, I didn’t know there were jaguars in Arizona,'" Serraglio said.
Video by Russ McSpadden, Center For Biological Diversity.
