On Feb. 18, a jaguar nicknamed Macho B that has been documented by tracking cameras since 1996 was inadvertently snared by an Arizona Game and Fish Department trap. Arizona and New Mexico are on the far northern edge of the animals' range. Their primary home is Central and South America, especially the Amazon. Federal and state experts contend that the jaguars that come into Southern Arizona originate from a colony of perhaps 70 to 100 cats about 130 miles south of the border in the Mexican state of Sonora. After the capture, state biologists placed a collar with GPS satellite-tracking capabilities on the sedated animal and then released him. Because the collar signals location information every three hours and also is programmed to signal when the border is crossed, government scientists and environmentalists agree that it's likely to provide a wealth of data. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Center for Biological Diversity, on opposite sides of a lawsuit scheduled for federal trial later this month over the jaguar, disagree over what good the new information will do...Arizona Daily Star
The CBD clearly wants the data to assist in the lawsuit to establish critical habitat.
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