The jaguar and the PhD
From a young age, I dreamed of studying big cats. My favorite cat was the African lion, and I had a recurring dream of having one in my backyard, which I fed bones. This love of cats (and wildlife in general) started with books, encyclopaedias, nature shows, and zoos. I eventually earned a Master’s in Science degree with a study on mountain lions in Baja California, Mexico. I produced a map with preferred habitat; analyzed scat contents to identify mountain lions’ prey species; and conducted numerous surveys of the local residents about economic activities, cattle grazing, and ranching activities. Not surprisingly, the results pointed to conflict in areas where humans or their activities converge with mountain lion distribution. Some years later, I was invited to be part of a new study of jaguars in Northwest Mexico. The study aimed to generate new information about the social organization and feeding habits of jaguars and mountain lions in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Sonora and about their dispersal movements into ranges along the United States–Mexico border, where they had been recently documented. The study would be the first of its type for this region, gathering new data with radio telemetry, remote camera photographs, scat, tracks, and sign data points collected in the field. The study area is about 120 miles south of the Arizona–Sonora border—a remote, rugged area of the Sierra Madre with low human population density and historically a region of extensive private lands, mostly dedicated to cattle grazing by private landowners. This project would be my PhD dissertation. Tropical and temperate species come together, at least for a season, in this transition area between the Sonoran Desert scrub and the oak and pine woodlands of higher elevation ranges on the western slope of the Sierra Madre, where canyons and streams lined with palm trees grow next to columnar cacti and wildflowers. The area sustains a great diversity of plants and animals at the edge of the Nearctic and Neotropical regions—bald eagles returning to places where military macaws live; ocelots moving through the same drainages as coatis and desert tortoises. The “research station” was located at the end of a long, winding dirt road, about 50 miles (80 km) from the closest town. It took at least nine hours to drive there. The remoteness meant living in very basic conditions and having simple arrangements for activities like sleeping, showering, and cooking—not the typical National Geographic or Discovery Channel adventures. Before my arrival, remote cameras were installed along creeks, game trails, and places where jaguar tracks or kills were found. Additionally, foot-hold snares—long metal cables attached to the base of a tree, with a loop and swivel at the other end where a jaguar or a mountain lion would walk in and get caught—were also set in order to capture them to place radio collars and monitor the big cats’ movements.