Now this is something you may never see again in your life.
Back on January 3rd, wildlife photographer Jason Miller posted the incredibly rare scene of a jaguar on his trail camera in the Huachuca Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. Yes, a jaguar
He said into the camera on the YouTube video:
“Five years ago, I started running trail cameras for wildlife footage here in southern Arizona, hoping one day maybe I’d get a jaguar. I was fortunate enough to get an ocelot the last several years.
Just north of the Mexico border in a deep canyon, on December 30th, I was hiking up checking some cameras. I set up some cameras overlooking this mountain lion scrape, hoping to get a lion. Well, I got lots of wildlife, including my first jaguar.”
The jaguar was caught on camera back on December 20th, and to make it picture perfect, the creature was showing its teeth right back towards the camera.
According to CBS, a five-person team from the Arizona Game and Fish Department inspected the footage, and came to the realization that this is the first time this creature has ever been documented on camera. By studying its pattern, they were able to determine that it is unlike any jaguar they’ve seen in the States before, meaning it traveled up from Mexico for the first time. Insert obligatory border joke…
Miller’s discovery marks only the eighth known jaguar to step foot in the U.S. since 1996 before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified the species as endangered.
Russ McSpadden, a southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said:
“I’m certain this is a new jaguar, previously unknown to the United States. After being nearly wiped out, these majestic felines continue to reestablish previously occupied territory despite border wall construction, new mines, and other threats to their habitat.”
Jaguars were once found in the United States and recently, there’s been a push to reintroduce them in places like Arizona and New Mexico. However, some don’t want more big cats roaming the United States. Jaguars are the 3rd largest cats in the world, behind only lions and tigers… sure don’t wanna come across one of them when you’re checking out the Grand Canyon.
Nevertheless, a pretty damn cool sighting.
