From Arizona comes the story of a remarkable animal sighting: an ocelot, one of the world’s most well-known small wildcat species.
Mostly native to South and Central America, its range once upon a time extended up above the Rio Grande, and one was just recorded passing through the Atascosa Highlands of Southern Arizona’s Coronado National Forest.
The cat was seen by one of 50 camera traps set by the Phoenix Zoo as part of a wildlife monitoring project.
A variety of thornscrub and scattered oak woodlands blanket the slopes of the Tumacacori, Atascosa, and Pajarito mountains which together make up the Highlands—the perfect territory for the nocturnal hunter, which was captured moving across one of the camera traps.
It was on a routine battery replacement that Kinley Ragan, field research project manager for the Phoenix Zoo, stopped to check the SD card for anything interesting.
“This particular location required a 40-minute hike to the site as the temperature was reaching 95 degrees,” Ragan says in a statement released by the zoo.
“The ocelot video (see below) was one of the last videos I reviewed and sent full chills through my body at the excitement and pride in what we had recorded. I was in disbelief at first, watching the video over and over again, but soon a big smile spread across my face as the full impact of this discovery for the important region set in.”
Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) Regional Nongame Specialist, Tracy McCarthey, confirmed the finding.
“AZGFD has conducted a pelage spot analysis comparing this ocelot with the current known ocelot in the state, as well as previous ocelots, and concludes that this is indeed a new ocelot.”
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Ocelots have been listed as Endangered in the United States since 1972 and are only intermittently recorded in Arizona. This particular cat was observed in desert scrub and at lower elevations than most historical records of ocelots in Arizona.
Another ocelot has consistently been recorded in the last year on camera footage from the Huachuca mountain range, greater than 50 miles away from this new sighting.
“Finding evidence of a new ocelot in southern Arizona reinforces our commitment to collaborative efforts to conserve wildlife and their habitats in the region,” says Phoenix Zoo President and CEO Bert Castro. “We’re eager to review additional camera data from this study to see what else we can learn about species of conservation concern in the borderlands and what they need for their continued survival.”
A previous camera trap survey in the area carried out last year yielded evidence of 21 mammal species in the Highlands, which are considered a crucial wildlife corridor, but no ocelot or jaguar. With this new piece of evidence in hand—notable for the lower elevation at which it occurred, the zoo plans to conduct even broader surveys as well as DNA analysis from nearby water sources to better understand ocelot presence in the area, as well as to perhaps uncover additional secrets in this beautiful slice of American desert.
“We’re excited to see if this was a one-off and what this means for the area,” Ragan tells the Arizona Republic. “Are there more? Now that we are formally surveying it, what else can we uncover in this beautiful landscape?”
YOU’VE Got To SHARE This Amazing Sighting With Your Friends From Arizona…