Lawsuit Claims US/Mexico Border Fence Impedes Jaguar

JJ Hensley, The Arizona Republic
An environmental group filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Wednesday claiming a fence being built along the Arizona-Mexico border is jeopardizing the vitality of the Southwest’s dwindling jaguar population.

The species, which roamed throughout the southern U.S. in the early 1900s, has been listed as an endangered species since 1997, but the Center for Biological Diversity said a comprehensive recovery plan is required to repopulate the jaguar in the United States.

Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, said a court should order the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency to follow its own rules on endangered species. advertisement

“They’re trying to evade the whole discussion by saying we don’t need to recover jaguars in the United States,” Robinson said.

But there’s already a plan to preserve the jaguar in place, said Elizabeth Slown, a spokeswoman with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and Arizona’s Game and Fish Department has taken the lead on developing that strategy.

That strategy doesn’t call for the jaguar’s recovery in Arizona because the species never had sufficient numbers to thrive in the state and has always relied on a flow of traffic over the Arizona-Mexico border.

The construction of an imposing continuous fence along the border certainly jeopardizes the jaguar’s chances to travel between the two countries, but that issue is far beyond the realm of local wildlife agencies, said Terry Johnson, an endangered species coordinator with the Game and Fish Department.

The Department of Homeland Security has given Congress permission to overlook at number of environmental and endangered-species rulings in the effort to hasten the fence’s construction.

“In a period of 10 to 20 years, you may well end up with a completely fenced border. Clearly that would be an impediment to jaguars,” Johnson said. “This is a congressional issue. That’s something that’s way beyond the ability of a conservation team.”