Argument 1 is true, although the presence of three jaguars in southern Arizona in 2016 and historically high levels of prey in Arizona indicates that

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1 March 20, 2017 Jaguar Recovery Coordinator U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona Ecological Services Office, 9828 North 31st Avenue, #C3, Phoenix, AZ Dear Jaguar Recovery Coordinator: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Jaguar Draft Recovery Plan. We commend the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ( Service ) for moving forward with the planning process. Much of the following is based on our in-depth jaguar report, Bringing El Tigre Home, which is attached as part of these official comments. This report provides substantiating detail about the conclusions we state in this cover letter. The draft recovery plan shows a great deal of work and includes an exhaustive review of the literature and contracted studies on habitat and population viability. However, there are serious flaws that, unless fixed in the final recovery plan, make it unlikely that the jaguar will be ever be recovered in the United States. The plan states that it meets our statutory requirements to address recovery of the species throughout its range to the maximum extent practicable (page xi). We disagree. The draft recovery plan does not provide for recovery in the U.S., defined as a sustainable breeding population, and states that In the Northwestern Recovery Unit Mexico will be the primary contributor to recovery for the jaguar because over 95 percent of the species suitable habitat in the NRU exists within the borders of Mexico (page 2). The Service fails in its duty to plan for recovery of the jaguar in the U.S. The core issue is that the Service is avoiding its obligation to recover the species in the United States. As we show below and in our attached report, the Service s process to assess what is practicable is flawed because it unreasonably restricts the recovery area and failed to consider translocation. Although it is sometimes necessary to read between the lines, the Service appears to justify its abandonment of recovery in the U.S. with several related arguments: 1) the jaguar has largely vanished from the U.S., 2) the U.S. population is peripheral to the hemispheric range of the jaguar, 3) inadequate habitat exists in the U.S. to establish a viable breeding population, and 4) the bulk of the world s population lives outside the U.S. and so a U.S. population is unimportant. 1

2 Argument 1 is true, although the presence of three jaguars in southern Arizona in 2016 and historically high levels of prey in Arizona indicates that habitat conditions could sustain breeding jaguars if they were present. The current near absence of jaguars is not grounds for abandoning recovery in the U.S. The Service s goal should be to reestablish a breeding population. Argument 2 is true in the sense that the U.S. jaguars are and were at the northern edge of the species range, but peripheral should not be taken to mean trivial or unimportant. As discussed in the plan, some scientific studies have shown that peripheral populations can be important in helping species under threat survive. This could particularly be true in the case of climate change in which the species range might be expected to shift north. Argument 3 is not true, and the Service has only reached this conclusion by arbitrarily restricting the recovery area and planning to south of Interstate 10, and possibly by basing its habitat modeling on historical jaguar occurrences that may not be reflective of the wide range of habitat that jaguars could actually use (see below). Some models, including the 2010 Center for Biological Diversity model based on criteria developed by the Jaguar Conservation Team, have predicted substantially more habitat, notably millions of acres in the Mogollon Rim area. As for Argument 4, although it is true that most of the world s jaguars live outside the U.S., this does not justify the Service s decision to trivialize and abandon recovery within the U.S. This decision contravenes the spirit and letter of the Endangered Species Act. The central purpose of the ESA is to protect imperiled species and ecosystems in the U.S. In enacting the ESA, Congress found that various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation, 16 U.S.C. 1531(a)(1) (emphasis added), and that these species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people. Id. 1531(a)(3) (emphasis added). The intent of the ESA, therefore, is to better safeguard[], for the benefit of all citizens, the Nation s heritage in fish, wildlife, and plants. Id. 1531(a)(5) (emphasis added). Congress made clear that the ESA was structured to ensure the protection of U.S. species and expressly includes the possibility of declaring a species endangered within the United States where its principal range is in another country, such as Canada or Mexico, and members of that species are only found in this country insofar as they exist on the periphery of its range. H.R. Rep. No , at 10 (emphasis added). The legislative history of the 1978 amendments, which authorized the listing of population segments, further makes clear that Congress believed the U.S. population of an animal should not necessarily be permitted to become extinct simply because the animal is more abundant elsewhere in the world. S. Rep. No , at 7. Thus, even a peripheral population of a species, the majority of which is found elsewhere in the world, can warrant ESA protection in America. See Sw. Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. Babbitt, 926 F. Supp. 920, 924 (D. Ariz. 1996) (holding that Congress intended to protect species in the United States regardless of their global status); Defenders of Wildlife v. Babbitt, 958 F. Supp. 670, 685 (D.D.C. 1997) ( FWS cannot be allowed to dismiss the contiguous United States population of a species merely because it is more plentiful elsewhere. ). To faithfully fulfill the purposes of the ESA, the Service must take affirmative steps to protect and recover imperiled species in the United States. Recovery planning is a core responsibility that could help improve the conservation status of the jaguar. 2

3 The decision not to plan for jaguar recovery in the U.S. runs counter to precedents where other species, like the bald eagle and peregrine falcon, were recovered despite having at one time largely vanished from the continental United States. The Service has also focused on recovery in the U.S. with other species that are still in a recovery process, including the Sonoran pronghorn, red wolf, grizzly bear and Mexican gray wolf. In each of these cases, viable populations were established as a result of recovery actions. For all these species the key element in recovery was a proactive dedication by the Service and its partners to restore populations in the United States. Tools used include captive breeding, translocation, habitat purchase and restoration, and species-focused management. This dedication is lacking in the case of jaguars, at least as evidenced by the draft recovery plan. The Service restricted recovery planning to south of Interstate 10 As detailed in our attached report, the Service has restricted the recovery area and therefore planning to south of Interstate 10. The plan provides little justification for this decision, which is contravened by historical distribution records, which included jaguars as far north as the Grand Canyon, and by several habitat models, including one by the Center for Biological Diversity in 2010, as detailed in our report. The Service restricted habitat modelling to south of Interstate 10 and may have defined suitable habitat too strictly The Service commissioned habitat modelling by Sanderson and Fisher, as reported in Appendix E of the draft recovery plan, but restricted the U.S. area considered to south of I-10, i.e. to the U.S. portion of the Borderlands Secondary Area (BSA) within the Service-designated Northwestern Recovery Area (NRU). Appendix E states that The area north of Interstate 10 in the United States was removed from the recovery unit definition at the request of the JRT at the meeting March 1 3, According to the modelling report, the process in which the Service gave the modelers feedback progressively amended assumptions used in the modelling, thereby progressively restricting the amount of apparent habitat. We note that changing the assumptions underlying models changes the output, leading to greater or smaller estimates of habitat. The Service s habitat modelling was based on correlating events (jaguar occurrences) with habitat variables, including ruggedness, altitude, tree cover, and human influence. However, by the time in history that these occurrences were being noted, jaguar populations had likely already been highly reduced. Therefore some apparent habitat associations, like jaguar preference for rugged topography, may not reflect jaguar preferences in the absence of persecution, but may reflect where the surviving jaguars were found. It s possible or even likely that, prior to serious persecution beginning in pioneer times, jaguars were naturally found in less rugged topography and possibly in areas of less tree cover. In the future, if jaguars were to be successfully reestablished in the U.S., like mountain lions and bobcats they might live in areas with greater human influence, provided they weren t persecuted. Broadening the allowed values of such parameters for habitat mapping could lead to significantly larger estimates of potential habitat; resultant PVAs would predict larger 3

4 potential population sizes. We note that jaguars as a species are habitat generalists found in tropical jungle, swamps, and in the U.S. in coniferous forest. The decision by the Service to restrict recovery planning to south of Interstate 10 removed from consideration the largest contiguous areas of potential habitat, the millions of acres of relatively natural habitat north of Interstate 10 in the Mogollon Rim-Apache Highlands region of Arizona and New Mexico. Because habitat north of Interstate 10 was excluded, there is no provision in the plan for maintaining critical underpasses like Davidson Canyon that could permit jaguars and other wildlife to cross the freeway safely. The Service restricted population viability analysis to south of Interstate 10 As detailed in our attached report, the Service contracted a population viability analysis by Miller based on the habitat modelling in Appendix E that was restricted to considering a hypothetical U.S. jaguar population only within the Borderlands Secondary Area, bounded to the north by Interstate 10. Because this analysis did not consider the millions of acres of potential habitat north of the BSA, it concluded that the U.S. resident population would likely include just 2 4 adult females, an inadequate number to sustain a viable population. If the Service had included habitat north of I-10, and particularly if it had broadened its model parameters in line with the argument that jaguars in the absence of persecution might use a broader spectrum of habitat, this number could be substantially larger. An analysis by Povilitis in 2014, cited in our report, predicts that national forest lands alone in the Mogollon Rim area plus the Sky Islands could support 249 jaguars. The Service failed to consider translocation It is curious to compare the jaguar draft plan with the recently released Recovery Plan for the Ocelot, which elaborates strategies for recovering the ocelot in the U.S. One of the major strategies discussed for ocelots is translocation from Tamaulipas, Mexico to augment the Texas population. By comparison, the jaguar plan does not include modelling or other feasibility analysis for jaguar translocation. If translocation is an option to be considered for ocelots, why not for jaguars? The failure to consider translocation affects the Service s conclusions about the feasibility of recovery in the U.S. For example, the conclusion in Miller s 2013 population viability assessment report that conditions are not currently favorable for establishing a long-term viable population of jaguars in the northernmost portion of the Northwestern Recovery Unit (p. 2) is based in part on relatively low levels of dispersal across the United States - Mexico border. Miller notes that If there is a specific desire to facilitate such a process of establishment, directed attention to improving any or all of these limiting factors is an essential step to achieving the long-term goal (p. 2). One way to improve the low levels of dispersal from Mexico would be to release jaguars in the U.S. The Service s passive approach to jaguar recovery, in which jaguars are left to find their way to the U.S., is unlikely to result in recovery. As Miller noted, dispersal across the border is infrequent, with only four males and one jaguar of unknown sex identified in the U.S. since But more discouragingly, no females have been identified in the U.S., which is to be expected because of the known tendency of females to set up their home ranges close to their mothers. An analysis by 4

5 Warshall, cited in our report, estimated that it would at minimum take many decades for females to reach the U.S. border. SUMMARY The above concerns have cumulatively led to the Service s decision not to invest in significant recovery in the U.S. By restricting habitat analysis to south of Interstate 10 the conclusion was reached that there is relatively little habitat available. Based on this restricted habitat, and without considering translocation, the PVA predicted small population sizes. This apparently contributed to the Service s decision to make recovery primarily a Mexican matter. Recommendations In the final recovery plan, the Service should include: Explicit recovery goals, preferably numerical, that aim to reestablish a sustainable breeding population in the U.S. Strategies and priorities for achieving this goal. These must include establishing breeding jaguars in suitable habitat north of Interstate 10, and protecting and possibly improving corridors across I-10. Additional habitat modelling scenarios that include a) all of Arizona and New Mexico and b) a broader range of values for key parameters, including a broader range of ruggedness and altitude. These analyses should be used to plan for establishing a sustainable breeding population in the U.S., including north of I-10. An additional population viability analysis based on a more generous allocation of habitat, as per the preceding bullet, including north of I-10. Include scenarios where translocation increases population augmentation and gene flow. This analysis should be used to plan for establishing a sustainable breeding population in the U.S., including north of I-10. An objective, science-based assessment of the translocation option, including an evaluation of potential effects on possible Sonoran donor populations, similar to that done for the 2016 Recovery Plan for the Ocelot. Review of the Service s translocation study and habitat modelling by an objective, respected scientific entity like the Society for Conservation Biology or the Academy for the Advancement of Science. We look forward to discussing these issues with you further in the hopes of seeing an improved final recovery plan. Sincerely, 100 N Stone Ave., Suite 807 Robert Peters. Ph.D., Senior Representative Defenders of Wildlife, Southwest Office. Tucson, AZ rpeters@defenders.org 5

6 Wendy Russell Patagonia Area Resource Alliance P.O. Box 1044 Patagonia, AZ Gayle Hartmann, President Save the Scenic Santa Ritas 8987 E. Tanque Verde, # Tucson, AZ,