Posted on diciembre, 22 2020

We have followed the footsteps of the jaguar for more than two years using camera traps in a territory on the border of the Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian Amazon. Together with WWF Peru and Ecuador, we revealed this year the study that gathers much of the data collected these past years and the analyses carried out by the working groups in charge of this effort in community monitoring and conservation science.

The study was conducted in the Napo-Putumayo tri-national corridor shared by the three countries, and it was published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. It is the first investigation about a jaguar population in a national park in Peru (Gueppi Sekime National Park) and one of the first carried out in indigenous lands and protected areas in Ecuador and Colombia (the Cuyabeno Fauna Reserve and the Predio Putumayo Indigenous Reservation, respectively).

What did we learn? The researchers concluded that protected areas and indigenous territories are key to the conservation of the jaguar in the Amazon, since they serve as a fortress for vertebrates such as the jaguar, which constantly move across geopolitical borders. Fortunately, this part of the northwestern Amazon has yet not been substantially modified, which shows the importance of maintaining conservation efforts in these territories.

In Colombia, we have carried out monitoring activities in the Predio Putumayo Indigenous Reservation, since it is images of the species and analyzed them as part of an effort to strengthen local governance processes.

We spent 10,500 hours of work analyzing 64,700 photos taken in an area of 540 km2. The images yielded an estimated population of 2,000 jaguars in the corridor, which represents a density of 1.5 jaguars per 100 km2.

This information is a key input for future jaguar conservation plans that include protected areas and indigenous territories and that recognize the importance of working with the communities that inhabit these areas