Almost two weeks ago we told you about the jaguar that was extracted from a farm in the Northern Lagoon area of the Belize district. That jaguar had been trapped by farmers after it had spent several months feeding off the livestock in the area. The Forest Department was called in to extract it, but not long after the jaguar was transported to the Belize Zoo, it died. According to experts, the stress of being captured was too much for the otherwise healthy animal to handle.
Today the National Jaguar Working Group issued a press release giving its recommendations for what civilians should do if a jaguar is threatening them or their animals. When we spoke to the Forest Department's Jaguar Officer a couple weeks ago, she gave us some of that same advice. Here's what she said...
Shanelly Carillo - Jaguar Officer, Forest Department
"First of all they need to contact the Forest Department as soon as possible and that's very important, because if the animal is not used to seeing domestic animals as a source of food, we can try to make it move away from the farm and just feed on the natural wild prey. So contact the Forest Department. We have a lot of advice that we can give to farmers and how to properly manage their animals and ensure that jaguars do not feed on the domesticated animals. That's the first step. From there we can try different things to make sure that the farm is safer and that jaguar stay outside of the farms and the domestic animals are safe inside the farm which is very important. We need to make sure that the jaguars can still move around in Belize, have healthy populations, but not causing problems to the farmers and their animals."
Reporter
"So you mentioned that situations like this where you actually have a captured jaguar, is that because you guys think it's because you don't get the calls often enough? Are farmers taking the matter into their own hands and then just getting rid of the jaguars themselves rather than going through appropriate procedure to try and save these animals that are endangered?"
Shanelly Carillo - Jaguar Officer, Forest Department
"There are different things happening. It has to do with some farmers taking things into their own hands but as well we do not get reports of it sometimes, that is very important and we are trying to improve to make sure that farmers know that there are people that they call for these issues and that they can get help. So it's not something that they have to fight this on their own. We are here to help and we are just hoping that they can continue calling and the persons who haven't been calling, start calling the department."
Apart from alerting the relevant authorities to monitor the situation and working with the Forest Department to secure livestock and pets, the Jaguar working groups recognizes that more government agencies and stakeholders need to get involved address problem jaguars.
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