The Jaguar in Iberá

[Dark Jaguar]

(01-21-2021, 09:23 PM)Balam Wrote:

(01-21-2021, 09:06 PM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: @Balam

Glad you've spoken to them, Keep your contact with them and keep an eye on weights datas as well.


I also heard in Argentina they started a conservation project by Fundación Rewilding Argentina to study the Maned Wolves in Iberá using VHF and GPS technology and they have collared The first Maned Wolf ever in Argentina so massive congrats to all professionals involved and to the ones who gave support and I am gonna post about it.


About Leandro he is well aware about the Iberá rewild project and he appreciates their great job, he mentions it on one of his recent videos about why Coragem cerrado cub can't return back to nature and how expensive it is to introduce top predators into the wild and I agree with what you said regarding the breeding his adult jaguars to help.


The jaguars sanctuaries and semen collection as you know are reserved for the most vunerable biomes population wise in Brazil, Caatinga and the divided Atlantic Forest are on top priority in case they sucumb specially for Caatinga jaguars since if conservation isn't done and well applied the small numbers of wild Caatinga jaguars left in Northeast Brazil would be the first ones to disappear today and that'll be the moment the Reprocon's semen collection and all captive jaguars kept for this porpoise in Brazil take action. But I gotta say Caatinga jaguars wouldn't be pure bred anymore ( Caatinga houses a massive unique melanism genetic density in its jaguars) which is bad but with no opitions better have mixed wild jaguars than no jaguars at all haha, the best thing to do is to avoid extinction at all costs.


And I'll post more in the Jaguars of Brazil thread more often on these brazilian biomes as I get free time.


I can imagine how hard the bureaucracy is for permissions to legally allow translocations of native wild animals between 2 countries or more.


It would be good act of Leandro and IOP if they donated a few brazilian jaguars (in conditions to be worked for rewild) for Iberá, they would play big role just like Jatobarzinho young male.


NEX No Extinction donated 2 female jaguars (Juruna and Mariua) to Iberá. They were rescued from the wild after their mother died at the hands of hunters. In the NEX Center near Brasília they remained with minimal contact with humans until they were donated to the Jaguar Reintroduction Project in Iberá.


Back to Leandro outside of jaguars in his sanctuary in Goiás State he and his Institute IOP also keep 200 Black Caimans juveniles approved by the Goiás State Environmental Secretariat (SEMAD) the State environmental authority which is quite controversial as the Crocodilians are conducted in an area outside the species distribution, the IOP staff announced the implementation of an ex-situ conservation breeding program for Black Caimans (M. niger) as a potential genetic reservoir for an endangered species and the Crocodilian experts community of Brazil isn't liking this idea since his sanctuary doesn't have enough structure to house such a formidable Top predator as Black Caimans and there's risks of them escaping from the sanctuary with unpredictable ecological consequences in environments where Black Caimans has never occurred.


The Black caiman’s escaping dispersal in the Cerrado or Pantanal would be tragic to the ecossystem as the Black Caimans would impact the local predators of the Biomes and such a top predator that can reach and surpass 6 meters in length could lead the risk of potentially creating conficts with local communities.


Thats what is worring the Brazilian Crocodilian-Research community including the brazilian Black Caiman expert Ronis da Silveira about the safety of the enclosures used by IOP to avoid the escape of M. niger individuals larger than 1.5 m to avoid unnecessary ecological damage and also Neither IOP nor SEMAD has contacted any crocodilian specialist in Brazil to assess the current state of the animals and define criteria for making decisions about their future.


So Leandro, his wife and (SEMAD) holds a huge responsability on their hands, Lets just Hope and prey no accidents of Black Caimans escaping happen in their sanctuary.

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This is the Official link complaint about the juveniles Black Caimans case in IOP that was recently published by Brazilian Crocodilians Specialists.

You must Check it Out.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication..._community

To be honest, out of this whole situation to me the organization that keeps shining and showing their impeccable work is Oncafari, I mentioned in the opening post of this thread how crucial they were in the rescue of Jotabazinho and the two sisters for further rewilding in Ibera. Oncafari was the first organization to release orphaned jaguars back into the wild, where IOP failed, and their first-hand knowledge is what is allowing this reintroduction project in Ibera to take place.

The biologist for Oncafari are setting themselves apart as world renounced for big cat conservation, I'm very proud of them, and yet they're very open to the public and in helping all of us who are interested in jaguar ecology by providing information. They have been nothing but kind to me as they provide me data, whereas IOP refuses to release data to the public. 

It seems to me that the team at IOP is involved in a series of controversial projects such as the one you mentioned involving the black caiman on a foreign habitat. Moreover, I still find it uneasy that he's breeding jaguars to keep them in captivity and subjecting them to stress at a young age, depriving them of proper contact with other jaguars, and this was the impression I got from the jaguar Coragem. The video where he explained why he thought he could not be released into the wild did not seat well with me. Coragem appeared extremely agitated, I can't think for a youngster like him the isolation it is would do any good. Why not just bring it to Ibera to continue helping jaguar conservation in a practical way? The permits needed for a jaguar that was born in captivity are different and I assume the relocation process would be easier to get done.

Overall, I can say that I'm not a big fan of the work of Leandro, he's done some really good things for jaguar conservation throughout his career, but other decisions he's made I can't help but disagree on.

Onçafari indeed did a very good job on their rewild project with Isa and Fera in pantanal and Pandora and Vivara in Amazon and hopefully they will succeed in introducing the female Puma Cacau ( which I am pretty sure you aware of ) into the Pantanal.

But infos wise there's still the Cerrado jaguar Lua they captured but Onçafari didn't reveal the weight and I'm still waiting that info and yes the researches and conservation of Maned Wolves is their main priority in Pousada Trijunção east Cerrado but as they decided to capture one cerrado jaguar (like Lua) the datas shall be post to the public as well also considering if they capture just a few more cerrado jaguars from that area. So Lua's weight is still a mystery for us.


About Leandro, his wife and the IOP crew the first thing I gotta say is that I am fed up with making hundreds of questions unanswered, so I am not asking about weights anymore.

About Coragem she is a female though, I don't think she's gonna be sent to Iberá specially cause she got a Godmother (a famous female artist) and Leandro will breed her to keep the pure Cerrado jaguar genetics in case Cerrado jaguars faces extinction or severe diminish in population, he also mentioned he only breeds jaguars from the same biome to keep their original genes from each biome.

His breeding idea overall from what I understood is to keep a reserve of genetically healthy jaguars in captivity for the future in case a biome loses its big cat.

Coragem interacts with other jaguars cubs and they relief and calm her down in the moment, she acts aggressively only towards humans when approached as she was found in the wild on a certain age already bonded with her mother with no interaction/contact with humans at all, so she will never be ''docile'' like her captive friends and that's how Leandro said she gotta be, to keep her with her natural wild jaguar spirit.

overall I agree with you, Leandro has done nice job for conservation and publishing datas ( scientific published ) but at same time these controversial cases cannot pass in blank, when I watched for the first time a video of the juvenile Black Caimans about a year ago I was like ''why the hell are there Black Caimans there, if it was other caiman species I'd be more relax but those were freaking Black Caimans as they get massive and are extremely aggressive and tend to be man-eaters and as I know very well how they look even as cubs/calves I noticed it before he even mentioned they were M.niger''


I don't agree with the Black Caimans there outside its natural range but now Lets hope his Black Caiman plan works since its already been started and approved by SEMAD who also gotta take reponsability for this. I hope those juveniles Black Caimans sucessfuly get released in Amazon biome territory where they belong. Only time will tell.

Here's how the juveniles Black Caimans are managed by IOP as Richard Rasmussen visited the sanctuary once again.

I think Leandro did better in the 2000's when he was working on the field capturing jaguars in Pantanal, Amazon, Caatinga as his Institute even studied Caatinga jaguars in Parque Nacional Serra das Capivaras and Parque Nacional Serra das Confusões both in Piauí. but after the sanctuary creation its more like internet and social media as I personally feel nowadays he shares for his followers more content from his sanctuary specially than the wilderness of Cerrado and I personally don't like this as its been a long time he doesn't post a camera trap video of some cerrado jaguar, maned wolf or other cerrado animal, but he is still posting the collar datas of where they have been during the months but as an enthusiast thats not enough for me ( but it is for his public ), in my case I wanna know way more about the wild. also its breeding time there and Maya, Pantera, Pandora are in heat so wild male jaguars are visiting the sanctuary more often ( and to also fight with Xavante ) so he should install a camera outside the enclosures to know who are the  cerrado jaguars that are going there, he only tracks them by the pugmarks and tracks such as the imposing hind legs digs marks that males sometimes leave on the ground when they're willing to fight, I am not sure about his followers but I pesonally wanna see more details on this regard about the wild Cerrado and learn way more about it, if he shared as many wild content as he does of the sanctuary I would be good with it but above all this I really want the weights of the jaguars he captures from that biome.

I think datas has to be published not kept (specially sizes haha) and this goes not only for IOP but also to all projects who works with wild animals. Reply