Homeland Security funded camera network will focus on jaguars

Starting next year, jaguars will be the target of an extensive network of remote cameras placed across Southern Arizona and southwest New Mexico. In a three-year, $771,000 project that has been greeted warmly by environmentalists but warily by cattle growers, University of Arizona researchers will try to learn more about the status and presence of the endangered animal. Fifteen years after the jaguar was listed as endangered in the U.S., this project will try to determine how often it roams from Mexico to the United States and back, said Melanie Culver, the project's principal investigator and a geneticist for the U.S. Geological Survey and the UA's School of Natural Resources. Funding is from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Other possible results of the research include: • Pinpointing movement corridors for jaguars across the mountainous borderlands region. • Understanding more about how other wildlife relates to jaguars, and about the region's general biodiversity. • Helping the federal government determine prime jaguar habitat, and prepare a federal recovery plan for the species. • Learning how much impact the U.S.-Mexican border fence, illegal immigrants, and vehicles and equipment used to pursue immigrants has on the animal...more

This must be from the bribe...excuse me...mitigation money going from the Border Patrol budget to Interior.