Livestock Conflicts- Did You Know?

Did you know one major threat facing jaguars are livestock conflicts? As the jaguar habitat shrinks they lose their prey and are forced to be closer to humans, and their animals. While hunting their prey they may stumble upon livestock which they will hunt instead. Livestock is the livelihood of most landowners and farmers so depredation is not tolerated and jaguars become hunted or poisoned by humans in retaliation of losing their livestock. In some cases a jaguar will be hunted before a livestock kill in fear of them killing the livestock. In these cases sometimes the jaguar becomes injured, instead of killed, resulting in them being unable to hunt. Since they can not hunt they go for easy prey, meaning more livestock is hunted because that is all they can hunt being injured. There are deterrents that can be put in place to protect livestock. Ranchers can build predator-proof enclosures for their livestock. People can also reduce or stop hunting jaguar prey species, so the jaguars can eat their prey rather than livestock.

Celebrate World Jaguar Day on April 10th!