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Dark Jaguar · 06-13-2020, 05:14 AM

@peter @epaiva @Pckts @OncaAtrox @GuateGojira @Lycaon and others. Check this one out.

Edition of December 2007

https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/o-amigo-da-onca/

Carlos Roberto Platero. How an ex-hunter now works for the preservation of the species of Jaguars and Pumas.

The anesthetic, applied with the aid of a dart, transforms the 100 kilos beast into a domestic cat; unless it doesn't work PHOTO: KEVIN SCHAFER_CORBIS_LATINSTOCK

*This image is copyright of its original author

( I gathered from these sources bellow as well and made it all into one single post )

http://rppnriodaslontras.blogspot.com/20...-mais.html

http://revistacrescer.globo.com/Revista/...65,00.html

http://revistagloborural.globo.com/Edito...-7,00.html

Platero the prior poacher who switched sides.

The hunter Platero with the onceiros. Former jaguar killer he today helps researchers save them.

*This image is copyright of its original author

"There is no greater emotion than shooting a jaguar/puma" says hunter Carlos Roberto Platero. He follows the trail in one of the last portions of preserved forest of Ivinhema, in Mato Grosso do Sul. The dogs are Platero's eyes in the forest. They are trained to sniff and surround the jaguars. The walk is interrupted by a sequence of howls. The hunter puts his rifle on his back and disappears into the trail in the direction of the noise. A few meters ahead, he finds a jaguar, which has climbed in the canopy of a tree. It is guarded by the dogs. Platero points his rifle at the animal and knocks it down with a precise shot. "Then the hunt is over," he says.

He managed to capture a female jaguar. "We caught Tina" says Laury Cullen, a forestry engineer at the Ecological Research Institute (Ipê). "We've found this jaguar before." He and Platero are former hunting buddies. Together they have captured more than 30 jaguars/pumas. But they are not traditional hunters anymore. They don't kill the animals. The shot contained a paralyzing dart. Tina was just anaesthetised.

Conservationist Laury Cullen (in green shirt) and a team of veterinarians. The anesthetized jaguars have been given necklaces that will help keep track of your tracks.

*This image is copyright of its original author

"Thanks to these researches, we discovered that jaguars don't just live in forest refuges," he says. "They venture out a lot. That's why it's common to see them walking near farms and cities". With this information, researchers realized that there was a mistake in the traditional way of creating protected areas. "This methodology resulted in the formation of isolated forest reserves. Real islands with a very rich nature, but disconnected from each other". The lack of connection of these areas has been recognised as the major obstacle to the reproduction of animals and plants. "Genetic exchange limited to a small territory can also result in waves of extinction. Or, worse, increase the number of cases of trampling on roads between reserves when an animal decides to migrate from one area to another in search of partners". says Cullen.

The Past.

Platero killed 54 Jaguars/Dark Jaguars/Pumas in eleven years. He threw away all the hides he collected, sinking them with stones into the bottom of the river. There were two painted hides left on the walls of his living room. One, for its exceptional size. It goes almost from floor to ceiling. Another, for the rare design of the stains "which look like ocelot spots".

Memories of the past: skin of a jaguar as a trophy.

*This image is copyright of its original author

The dogs shoot towards the forest. To follow them, the group gets into tufts of grass, goes into the water and goes through the woods inside. It is almost two hours of walking. The bark of the onceiros (dogs) is indicative of whether or not they are close to a jaguar, the third largest cat in the world, which has a stronger bite than tigers and lions. "The sound changes when they find the beast" says Platero. "At that moment the adrenaline is so great that we even forget that we spent the dawn walking in the woods. The dogs start howling and the hunter disappears towards the noise.

Scared, the jaguar climbs a tree. "That is the most dangerous moment. You can't see exactly where the animal is, or if it's going to jump," Platero says. The animal targets the ground in search of a way to escape, but the pack won't let it down. The howls get stronger. It's a sign that the jaguar is completely surrounded. "At that hour, safety is the shot. That's why I don't believe in this story of Zagaia" he says. The instrument that the hunter disdains is a spear made of wood, much used in the Pantanal to kill the cats. According to legends in the region, the hunters bury the zagaia in the heart of the jaguar at the moment it jumps into attack. "I think it's all bush**. Either Jaguar or Puma in order to kill them is only through guns fire bullets. '' says Platero.

Right on the first day of work, his six dogs, skinny and Paraguayan but of noble English blood, did not deny the breed. Within minutes, they sniffed the trail of a Jaguar. It ran straight up a first tree. All in the best costume of this kind of hunt. "The most beautiful animal there is is a jaguar," says Platero. "And when it goes up, then it looks like a painting."

The vegetation of the Cerrado helps to form this picture. In the forest, it is not always easy to follow the onceiros (dogs). And in the open field, they end up taking the beast to the ground. In that case, there has to have a bunch of dogs. Jaguar, the most cosmopolitan nickname of the Panthera Onca, is a yaguara corrutilla. It comes from the tupi "The one who fights". But, justice be done, the jaguar can run away from the suicide attack that the dogs move it to. It only reacts against the dogs when extreme cornered. And then "It does ugly damages to the dogs" as Platero explains. Even a dead jaguar has already defalcated his pack. It was a large male of 125kg "black painted of black", the biggest one he ever poached. He used to devour the cattles of Santa Clara Farm. When Platero shot him, he fell so heavily that he fell onto Corumbá and "Crushed/Smashed my best dog on the spot".

Carlos changed sides. He switched the cartridge for the anesthetic dart. "Killing is easier than saving, especially if the target is the Jaguar or the Dark Jaguar" he compares, referring to the ferocity, brute strength and speed of the Panthera onca in relation to the Puma (Puma concolor) and the outcome in the two types of hunting: in the first, the right aimed shot ends the chase. In the second, it saves. " Jaguars are fast and violent animals, besides beautiful. It dies, but it doesn't run away from the fight " says the hunter, who has already lost eight dogs, 1 in the jaws of the Puma and 7 in the jaws of the jaguar and dark jaguar.

''A cornered Jaguar turns into the devil, it sits on the ground beats and shatters its foes, then it stands up and whoever comes close gets beat up and also Jaguar's paw swipe feels worse than Wooden Cudgel. Did you see the shadow? Then you is gone. ''

Carlos killed 54 Jaguars/Dark Jaguars/Pumas until 1998 and sedated 45 from there to here, including the Puma that appears at his feet in the photo bellow. The 57kg beast ( weight later proved by biologist Dênis Sana, from Pró-Carnívoros ) captured on the morning of October 15th at Jandaia Farm in Anaurilândia, hours after slaughtering a two-month-old calf, dragging it to the marsh and started devouring it.

Platero and sedated 57kg Puma beast.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Dark jaguar trying to remove the dart out of its body.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Bruised calf and dog attacked by jaguars/pumas: fight for survival.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Today he is hired exclusively by researchers. He helps scientists capture jaguars/pumas for monitoring programs. The conversion of the hunter into an environmentalist's helper took place in 1998 when he met Denis Sana, a biologist from the Pró-Carnívoros foundation. It was from that friendship that one of the country's greatest jaguar conservation program helpers emerged. "At first, it was strange not to kill the jaguar. But then you get used to it.

''Today I think it's good, because I know they're disappearing from the woods. You can't keep hunting like you used to," Platero says. The jaguar is taken off the net by a group of vets. Like all monitoring animals, it carries a radio-collar in its neck, a device that allows remote monitoring. The veterinarians also take blood samples and examine the animal. Everything has to happen in less than thirty minutes, before the ounce wakes up.

"We've already done a capture in which the animal was not sleeping at all. She jumped on us several times and even killed two dogs on the spot" Platero says. "Then we realized she was with a cub, so she got more agitated.

Platero receives from the programs about R$ 800 reais per capture. Double of what the cattlemen paid to have the large cats killed. Platero uses the money to keep the hunting dogs. "Forming a good onceiro-mestre costs money. That's why it makes me sad when a Jaguar or Puma kills my dogs" he says. "To tell you the truth, the problem is not money. I hunt because I like it, and if good hunting comes, I'll do it even for free."

Schaller in Pantanal ( same edition published as Platero's https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/o-amigo-da-onca/ )

Schaller put up with the Pantanal for a short time. The jaguars he put on necklaces died before the others, hunted by order of the foremen, who did not care about conservation in Acurizal. But he made school including for the "peaceful feeling of joy" that gave him to follow closely the beast in the night, alone for more than a month, "a few hundred steps away" the wanderings of an adult female while listening to the beeping of the tracker "in the silence of the moonless forest. After Schaller, the adventures with jaguars would never be the same again.

In his most recent book, which has just come out in the United States as A Naturalist and Other Beasts, he confesses to being a misanthropist who prefers good solitude to bad teams. But he praises Peter Crawshaw, who had just graduated in biology in Unisinos - Rio Grande do Sul, when he offered himself as Schaller's assistant, without an invitation or letter of recommendation. Two decades later, Crawshaw has disciples from the Amazon to the Serra Gaucha.

2 horrible jaguar captures told by Peter Crawshaw. ( same edition published as Platero's https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/o-amigo-da-onca/ )

With his chin marked by a jaguar's claw and upper incisors that sketch a permanent smile on his red face and blues, Peter Crawshaw looks foreign to brazilians until he opens his mouth. When he begins to narrate his stories in a low voice, a Brazil that has had to change a lot, to continue to be more or less as it was before, appears in the conversation. At the hotel in Foz do Iguaçu, where he told the case of the jaguar of Comboios, his table ended up surrounded by people, who came closer as the first curious to arrive attracted the others with smiles in their faces.

To capture it, he plunged years ago from Campo Grande, in Mato Grosso do Sul, in a pickup truck from Ibama, to the coast of Espírito Santo. He passed by Coxim on the way, picked up the dogs and "o Tonho", the trusted pantanal guide of farmer João Carlos Marinho Lutz. He cut four states. He arrived in trains on a Saturday night. Early Sunday morning, he went to the place only to see what was ahead. And he didn't like the circus he found armed. Eighteen people were waiting for him. Among them, soldiers of the forest police, mounting guards with 12 gauge shotgun, journalists and a biologist, with an armed camcorder.

Everything there started wrong, including "Tonho, who had never captured with me, and he was used to killing". Not knowing what to do, he released the pack, so the dogs could "stretch their legs after the trip". And, before any other idea occurred to him, the jaguar was hooked about 2 and a half meters high with seven dogs gaining at his feet in a branch of embaúba, which is not a tree to serve as a perch to an animal of this size.

He knelt down to prepare the dart. And the embaúba broke before he armed the anesthetic gun. The jaguar collapsed on the dogs. When Crawshaw raised his eyes, it was late. "Everybody was running to all sides and the Beast was in front of me around 2 to 3 meters away but on its back fighting all the dogs." The angle didn't allow him to hit Zelotil dose in the hind quarter. And Tonho had pulled the gun.

He just yelled, "Don't shoot!" so the jaguar turned to him "Raising the chin aggresively" Tonho shot four gun shots into the ground, just a few palms from the beast. It ran, passing close to the documentary maker who keeping an eye on the viewer had stumbled onto the trail and was stationed on the escape route. To shorten the comedy, the morning ended with three injured dogs, but no human victims. Crawshaw settled this five days later, 6 kilometers from there, without so many people around. It was an old male, blind in one eye, probably driven away from the Sooretama forest by successors.

There was no other place in the whole of the Holy Spirit for him. So that he wouldn't end his days in a zoo, Crawshaw "retired" him in Lutz's own farm, "which has 15,000 cattles and he wouldn't mind losing one cattle or another".

Crawshaw, without doing much math, thinks he's dealt with "about fifty jaguars". Twenty-plus in the Pantanal. Nine in Carajás. Thirteen on the edge of Porto Primavera. In Iguaçu he captured nine. And six died soon after, clandestinely hunted inside the national park.

At the beginning of the last decade, there were probably 150 jaguars in Foz do Iguaçú. The hunters in the vicinity were killing ten a year. During Crawshaw's research, a male fell into traps eight times because he had become addicted to eating the chickens used as bait. Another one became a customer of a hotel dumpster. And a female gave him a lot to do until she was caught, pregnant. Maybe because of the pregnancy, she seemed angry.

And she resisted the anesthetic too much. she weighed 75 kilos. "And you had the biggest canine I've ever measured: 5 centimeters long." she only slept with twice the normal dosage of Zoletil. She was unconscious and was given the necklace in front of an entourage, which included Crawshaw's father, three brothers, a brother-in-law and a 5-year-old nephew as well as his field assistant, the biologist Sandra Cavalcanti.

With the necklace on the jaguar was hard to wake up. He was on duty, with his father, waiting for the animal to wake up. "You are responsible for the animal until it can defend itself again," Crawshaw explains. With the delay, a couple of Scottish people came on the scene, shepherded by an American ornithologist. They were bird watchers. The three ended up there, against all safety regulations. "The jaguar was lying there, looking at us with dilated pupils. You couldn't get near it anymore," says Crawshaw. But the Scottish tourist squatted in front of her to take a picture.

With the photo camera flash burst, the jaguar rose instantly. Scared, the woman fell into the red clay of the drenched road. The jaguar, half groggy, also skidded into the mud. Crawshaw had time to jump between the two before the animal resumed its attack. "The beast stood, grabbed my head with her claws and pulled me into her mouth" he recalls. He pushed her jaws with his hand. His thumb slipped into the middle of her jaw. And he heard his bone snapping when her jaws shut.

Slipping in the mud, the two fell "luckily, each to one side." Thanks to Zoletil dose, what was enough in the jaguar in strength she was missing in motor coordination. If she was sober, Crawshaw believes she'd probably leave. But, "dizzy as she was, she'd strike in any movement." And so she'd come again when his father grabbed her by the tail.

"That's right: my father at 69 years old grabbed the jaguar's tail and started pulling it" says Crawhaw. "She gave up on me, turned around and bit his shin. She just lay there with his leg between her teeth." Crawshaw shouted to his father not to move, " otherwise it'll all get ripped," he ran to the car and picked up in the trunk a pool cue with a syringe on the tip. No anesthetic, it was just to suck the belly of the jaguar. It worked, in terms: "She dumped my dad and went back to my side. Grabbed one shoulder and clawed it about four times." through smacks with the beast Crawshaw backed off to the car, a veteran Rural Willys. The vehicle Only had two doors. And the front seat was, by that moment, occupied by four people (all terrified by the beast). Crawshaw threw himself into the tourists lap and slammed the door. The jaguar crashed against the car. She stayed there for a while, staring and growlling at them. And it wasn't until the moment she left that he remembered that the back covers of the trunk were still wide open.

Crawshaw came out of the incident with abrasions "in the body everywhere" a fractured thumb and "the lip hanging " and he says, making a gesture with his hand below the chin. After this meeting, he would follow the life of the jaguar, via the necklace for fourteen months. She became more and more dangerous during this time. For three times she went around his Ibama employee house, at the beginning of the Estrada do Poço Preto. She killed three dogs, one per visit. The soap opera ended when the jaguar fell into a trap again. Examining it, Crawshaw discovered that she had lost a canine and her gum had become infected. She was reduced to preying on pets. He dispatched her to the Piracicaba Zoo, where he found her again four years later.

note: This aggressive female jaguar from my suspicious from the datas previously shown by Peter Crawshaw, I think this aggressive female jag is CG female.

I AM GONNA DROP THE POST WHICH IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF THIS ONE RIGHT NOW.

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