Follow Up: Jaguars in Arizona

I posted on February 26th about a wild Jaguar caught in Arizona named Macho B...well on March 3rd, National Geographic wrote that Macho B had been put down after finding severe kidney failure in the old cat. RIP Macho B.

Jaguars in Arizona?!

I just read this at Cryptomundo and followed the link to a more recent article about it (from yesterday) - they caught a wild Jaguar in Arizona and are now tracking it. According to ReadItNews, "The male cat was incidentally captured Feb. 18 in an area southwest of Tucson during a research study aimed at monitoring habitat connectivity for mountain lions and black bears."

ReadItNews went on to explain, "Jaguars once ranged from southern South America through Central America and Mexico and into the southern United States. By the late 1900s, jaguars were thought to be gone from the U.S. landscape, but two independent sightings in 1996 confirmed that jaguars still used Arizona and New Mexico as part of the northern most extent of its range."

You can read more about Macho B - the Jaguar - at the Arizona Game and Fish Dept website.