Ocelot spotted on new trail-cam video moving through Southern Arizona

A wild ocelot has been making tracks in the Sky Islands of Southern Arizona.

Appearing twice this summer on wildlife cameras, the latest detection — first announced today — challenges prior understanding of what the ocelot range is in the region.

The rare spotted feline was first caught by wildlife camera in the Atascosa Highlands west of Nogales in June of this year. It was detected by researchers from the Phoenix Zoo.

A little more than a month later, after crossing Interstate 19, it was spotted in another mountainous region in Southern Arizona. Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, along with intern Clara Smith, were the first people to check the wildlife camera with the new sighting.

“I shouted with joy when I realized what I was seeing on the trail cam. This incredible footage shows us that ocelots belong in our Sky Islands, despite all the threats they face,” said McSpadden in a press release issued by the center.

McSpadden said experts thought the ocelot had a smaller range in the region, “but the new detection is blowing that conception open.”

“It traveled a really long distance, moving well over 30 miles,” McSpadden said. “It crossed I-19, showing that kind of highway is not an impenetrable barrier.”

To have made it to the new sighting, the cat must also have crossed the Santa Cruz River, which advocates are hoping to establish as a national wildlife refuge .

Protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1982, the ocelot is about the size of a bobcat, but known for its distinctive jaguar-like spotted markings, or rosettes.

It was the pattern of rosettes that led Carmina Gutiérrez González, a research coordinator for the Northern Jaguar Project, to confirm that the latest detection was the same ocelot seen a month earlier west of Nogales.

Researchers believe there are fewer than 100 ocelots in the U.S., with the majority in southern Texas.

“Arizona is home to a small but crucial population, which exists at the northernmost part of the species’ range,” according to the press release.

Mine threats

Much like the jaguar, the ocelot was hunted practically to extinction in the southern U.S. It’s now making a comeback, according to McSpadden. While not the apex predator that the jaguar is, the ocelot plays a key and irreplaceable role in our ecosystems.

The Center for Biological Diversity and other Southern Arizona-based conservation groups have been pushing for more wildland protections for jaguar, ocelot and other key predators. But mines and development threaten both of the rare cats, as well as many other species.

“We have almost identical concerns for ocelots that we do for jaguars,” McSpadden told Arizona Luminaria.

He added that “mining is a significant threat to ocelots.”

McSpadden said this particular cat “really appears to be on the move. It could be moving through either of those mountains,” where the proposed Copper World mine in the Santa Rita Mountains and the Hermosa mining project in the Patagonia Mountains are located. Any mining activity would push it away from that area and limit ocelots’ ability to survive.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in May, eliminated nearly 65,000 acres of the more than 640,000-acre protected jaguar habitat in Southern Arizona. The agency followed a court order that came after a decade-long legal battle set off by a mining company challenging a previous designation of protected jaguar habitat.

More recently, the U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans to open roads in Arizona’s Chiricahua mountains, part of the Coronado National Forest. In response, the center and four other environmental groups sued to give jaguars a chance to roam without vehicle traffic.

“The Sky Island Mountains are not just beautiful landscapes; they are living parts of our culture and identity,” said Chairman Austin Nunez of the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation in the press release. “Seeing the return of an ocelot to these ancestral lands reaffirms our sacred connection to this place and reminds us of our duty to protect these lands and the creatures that depend on them.”

“The ocelot’s survival is intertwined with ours,” Nunez added, “and we must ensure that this species endures for future generations.”

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