Many Americans are unaware that the jaguar, a big cat so classically associated with Central America, was once at home in the United States. It had fairly large, stable populations much of the southern half of the nation, until over-hunting and habitat destruction virtually annihilated the animal's foothold in the U.S. Strangely, the biggest threat to today's American jaguars might not be poachers or habitat destruction, but immigration law.
In 2008, officials acting under the Bush Administration made the decision not to write a recovery plan for the jaguar-- an unusual move given its critically endangered status in the U.S. The timing of the decision was horrendous. Four jaguars, all of them male, had been seen in the U.S. in the years preceding this decision. To survive and flourish, they would have needed mates-- but all known females were on the other side of a fenced national border.
Only one jaguar has been seen since the sightings of four males in the mid-00s. That jaguar died only shortly after it was documented by wildlife authorities, and the species is now presumed extinct in the United States. South of the border, jaguars continue to survive in Mexico, but their expansion northward is virtually impossible.
Barack Obama has instated a species recovery plan for the jaguar, but the action is very much a case of too little, too late. Although it will conserve habitat and, with any luck, prevent poaching, there is no way for jaguars to enter their newly protected habitat unless we either open our borders or physically transport jaguars across it.
Borders designed to prevent immigration are not only blocking jaguars from re-expanding into their previous range in the U.S., but are also preventing jaguars near the border from accessing many of their most critical sources of water and food. Deer may overpopulate on the U.S. side of the border while dwindling dangerously on the Mexican side. As a result, jaguars may starve while an entire expanse of suitable habitat lies tantalizingly on the other side of a twenty-foot fence.
Jaguars aren't the only victims of the border fence, either. Ocelots and jaguarundis, two related species, are also struggling to gain a foothold of their previously expansive habitat in the United States, but have no ability to migrate between borders because of our strict anti-immigration measures. Animals, it seems, are the collateral victims of our fights with one another.
Simply abandoning our current immigration laws wouldn't necessarily address the plight of the American jaguar. We need a more comprehensive adjustment to the way we write our laws and the way we interact with one another. Mexican or American, documented or undocumented, we humans share the same planet, and we can no longer afford to make innocent animals the victims of our conflicts. We need a fundamental change of heart that will not only protect the jaguar, but acknowledge our interdependence with the web of life we all share.