In 2009, it began a low-carbon push aimed at maintaining very low rates of deforestation and combating climate change, while also promoting economic development. Guyana, a country roughly the size of the US state of Idaho where most of the 756,000 inhabitants live along its Atlantic coastline, has been widely recognised for balancing progress with preservation.

No one has any reliable estimates of how many jaguars are left in the wild, where they prey on peccaries, tapirs and, as they are powerful swimmers, river turtles. Heavy hunting for their spotted coats decimated their numbers in the 1960s and early 1970s until the pelt trade was largely halted. Jaguars once roamed widely from the south-western United States to Argentina, but have lost nearly half of their natural territory and have disappeared altogether from some countries.

'Amerindians are very keen on being part of the project,' she said from the capital of Georgetown. That means that preserving grasslands are as important to conservation of jaguars as protecting the dense rainforests, they say.Įvi Paemelaere, a Belgian jaguar scientist with Panthera, said villagers in remote spots in Guyana have helped her set up cameras along the roads and hunting trails that the big cats like to travel on. Scientists reported finding a relatively healthy jaguar density of three to four animals per 161 miles in Guyana's southern Rupununi savannah. The South American nation, with some of the region's least spoiled wilderness, joins Colombia and nations in central America in recognising the corridor and agreeing to work towards the long-term conservation of jaguars, according to Esteban Payan, regional director for Panthera's northern South America jaguar program.Ī network of cameras equipped with motion sensors and fixed to tree trunks has revealed tantalising glimpses of sleek, solitary jaguars slinking through Guyana's dense rainforests and vast grasslands stretching to the country's border with Brazil.

Cougar by Alan Rabinowitz