A jaguar whiles away its life at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. FWS Photo.
From the Arizona Daily Star:
A federal judge overruled an agency’s decision today that had stopped preparation of a recovery plan and designation of prime protected habitat for the endangered jaguar in the Southwest.
District Judge John Roll’s ruling essentially said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to prove its case that the jaguar is primarily a foreign species and that there is no important habitat for it in Arizona and New Mexico. Roll ordered the service to return on January 8 of next year with a new decision on critical habitat and a recovery plan.
The ruling is a big victory for the Center for Biological Diversity, which had filed suit challenging service decisions on both issues, and the Defenders of Wildlife, that had sued against the recovery plan decision only.
The Center for Biological Diversity has more.
Yay!
Is it possible that a black or dark-colored, spotted cat I saw in the Mojave northeast of Baker in the mid-1980’s was a jaguar? I guess I’ll probably never know: the encounter was over so quickly (it ran away from about 25 feet in front of me) that I didn’t get a picture.
Excellent!