ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - C - THE JAGUAR (Panthera onca)

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The United States’ Only Wild Jaguar Gets a Name

November 09, 2015 Taylor Hill

The only known wild jaguar living in the United States now has a name—“El Jefe.”

The big cat has been roaming the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson, Arizona, for the past three years, with camera traps regularly documenting his movements.

Students at a local middle school voted to name the cat El Jefe—which means “the boss” in Spanish—to signify the jaguar’s place at the top of the food chain. Jaguars once roamed the American Southwest but disappeared from the region over the past 100 years owing to forest clearing, habitat destruction, hunting, and federal predator control programs.


El Jefe is the second male jaguar identified in the U.S. in the past decade. A hunter shot the last female jaguar in the country in 1963.

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(Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

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