In late summer, a jaguar padded somewhere near the San Rafael Valley, a pristine grassland nestled between the Patagonia and Huachuca Mountains southeast of Tucson. Trail cameras monitored by Sky Island Alliance confirmed its presence in the “impact zone” of a new 27-mile border wall slated for construction in that high country grasslands.
For conservationists and tribal leaders, the timing couldn’t be more poignant. The wall, if completed, will carve across the very corridor needed by wide-ranging species like jaguar and ocelot to survive.
While the precise location of the jaguar sighting has not been publicly revealed, in part to protect the jaguar from potential hunters or trackers, Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for Sky Island Alliance, told Arizona Luminaria it was north of the San Rafael Valley, and that the big cat “almost certainly crossed through the eastern side of those mountains.”…