First ‘cloud jaguar’ spotted in 10 years sparks hope in Honduras

By Tom Page, CNN

(CNN) — Camera traps have photographed a jaguar high up in the Honduran Sierra del Merendón mountain range, the first time the big cat has been detected there in a decade.

The lone male, known as a “cloud jaguar,” was spotted on February 6, about 2,200 meters up in high-altitude forest, a positive signal for the Central American nation attempting an environmental turnaround.

Jaguars have lost 49% of their historic range in the Americas, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The largest population lives in Amazonia, but all other populations are classified as endangered or critically endangered.

In Honduras jaguars are protected, though they face challenges.

“Deforestation and poaching are the biggest threats, and we have been working to tackle both,” said Franklin Castañeda, Honduras country director at wild cat conservation organization Panthera, which captured the images of the jaguar.

Between 2001 and 2024, the Central American nation lost 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of tree cover — 19% of its total — according to Global Forest Watch. Permanent agriculture like plantations and grazing land was the overwhelming reason.

The government has committed to curbing deforestation by the end of the decade , as well as restoring 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of forest. Its Zero Deforestation Plan 2029 declared a state of environmental emergency to protect forests and wildlife, utilizing a military patrol force comprising 8,000 troops to deter and prevent illegal agricultural and logging activity.

Meanwhile, poaching of jaguar prey species, such as the brocket deer, peccary and iguana, is thought to impact the big cat’s food supply.

But in the Merendón range, there are signs of environmental success.

The mountainous forest, along with other so-called cloud forests in Honduras, have been protected since 1987, when policymakers recognized their importance as vital watersheds for neighboring communities.

“They didn’t know then, but now we know they were also protecting a very important habitat for jaguars,” said Castañeda.

Illegal activity and biodiversity loss was not expunged altogether, however, and in recent years Panthera and its partners have ramped up surveillance efforts, including ranger patrols, camera traps and hidden acoustic monitors, as well as a program to reintroduce jaguar prey species. Panthera says poaching is down, and the protection and revitalization has made the forest more amenable to big cats.

“It seems we are seeing a recovery in large cats in general,” said Castañeda.

In 2021, after 17 years of surveys, the project detected pumas in the range for the first time, and there have been multiple sightings since. Ocelots, jaguarundis and margays have also been sighted, meaning the area features all five species of wild cats known to exist in Honduras.

Most jaguars live below 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) and cloud jaguars are exceptionally rare. There have only been a handful of sightings, including in Costa Rica and Mexico. It’s unclear if this is a new behavior or something that had previously gone undetected due to the remoteness of high-altitude areas, explained Dr. Allison Devlin, jaguar program director at Panthera.

There have been just three recordings of jaguars at high elevation in Honduras, the last in 2016. (The 2016 sighting prompted Panthera and it partners, including Wildlife Without Borders and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, to establish a protected wildlife corridor in the Merendón range between Honduras and Guatemala.)

Castañeda called the new sighting “awesome,” saying that the mountain where the big cat was seen had been surveilled for the past 15 years, and the last 10 years continuously.

Jaguars are not homebodies; records in Honduras show them traveling 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in a single night, and there’s documentation of individuals traveling as far as 400 kilometers (249 miles) near the US-Mexico border, said Castañeda.

The Merendón range does not contain a resident population, and the young male was likely moving along the wildlife corridor from eastern Honduras to Guatemala or vice versa in search of females, Castañeda speculated.

There are two populations in Izabal, Guatemala (Punta de Manabique Wildlife Refuge and Cerro San Gil Springs Protection Reserve) and two in Honduras (Pico Bonito National Park and Jeannette Kawas National Park) the jaguar could have come from, he said. The populations in Honduras are thought to be small: 10-18 jaguars in Jeannette Kawas National Park and 20-50 in Pico Bonito National Park. Movement between populations is essential for maintaining genetic diversity.

Devlin argued the sighting demonstrated “that protection of habitat across all elevations, including those people might not readily consider to support wild cat passage or territories, are in need of conservation for adaptable and wide-ranging species like the jaguar and puma.”

The Merendón corridor is part of a broader network called the Jaguar Corridor Initiative, first detailed in 2018 as part of the Jaguar 2030 Conservation Roadmap for the Americas. The wildlife corridor stretches from Mexico to Argentina, comprising 30 conservation landscapes. Panthera is involved in conservation efforts in 11 of the 18 nations home to jaguars.

The sighting in Honduras is not the only positive news for jaguars: this month a nationwide census in Mexico reported a 10% increase in the country’s wild jaguar population, rising from 4,800 in 2018 to 5,326.

Last month in Brazil at the UN Convention on Migratory Species Conference of the Parties (CMS COP15), a new international framework for jaguar protection was adopted — “a milestone for jaguar conservation,” said Devlin.

“Governments home to jaguars will now take significant actions to coordinate and cooperate with one another to protect this charismatic species and its habitat; support coexistence among jaguars, Indigenous peoples, and local communities; improve population monitoring; and address illegal killing of the species,” she explained.

Nongovernmental organizations will still have a large role to play. Panthera’s Honduras director said the organization is collaborating with the Rainforest Trust to establish a new protected area in the next couple of years called Wildlife Refuge Guanales, comprising high-altitude research camps and biodiversity sites, connecting Cusuco National Park in Honduras with the Sierra Caral Reserve in Guatemala. The result will be a new wild cat corridor, strengthening and protecting the jaguar’s range.

“Connectivity is king for the future of the jaguar,” said Devlin.

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