Permit for jaguar's capture questioned

Arizona's Game and Fish Department may have lacked the proper permit to capture a jaguar when Macho B stepped into a snare trap in Southern Arizona's oak woodlands last February. The big cat was euthanized 12 days later after veterinarians determined he had irreversible kidney failure. Since the capture, federal and state officials have said unequivocally that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had granted the state a permit to capture a jaguar, one of the rarest animals living in this country. But a review of state and federal documents and e-mails about the permit issue raises questions as to whether the state actually had that permission. The records show that there was uncertainty about that question among biologists for the two agencies. Two days after Macho B's capture on Feb. 18, a service biologist wrote that the permit question was "a big oops," in an e-mail obtained by the Star under the federal Freedom of Information Act...Arizona Star