Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Arizona
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Goal: To establish a defensible method to non-invasively and accurately conduct an intensive survey and monitoring system for jaguars in Arizona and New Mexico. This system will include GIS analyses to delineate areas most likely to detect jaguars, and dividing the study area into 3 zones of survey intensity and probability of jaguar detection. Cameras will be set at differing densities in the 3 zones and will be checked at differing frequencies in the 3 zones. During the entire study, opportunistic scats will be collected and analyzed using genetic techniques to determine if from a jaguar. If a jaguar detection occurs by photo or opportunistic scat collection, this will initiate a 6-week full time scat detection dog effort searching for jaguar scats in the area of the detection to gain additional detections and genetic material. Genetic data will be analyzed for additional data points to aid in habitat analyses for jaguars, and to assess genetic diversity for jaguars detected during this study. Photo data will be analyzed for species richness, species detection rates, species accumulation, activity patterns, and proportion of locations occupied for each species - for predators and prey species alike.