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Endangered jaguar seen on trail cameras in southern Arizona

This image taken from video provided by Fort Huachuca shows a wild jaguar on Dec. 1, 2016, in southern Arizona. An environmental group on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help reintroduce the jaguar to the Southwest, where it once roamed for hundreds of thousands of years before being whittled down to just one of the big cats known to survive in the region.
Fort Huachuca via AP, File
This image taken from video provided by Fort Huachuca shows a wild jaguar on Dec. 1, 2016, in southern Arizona. An environmental group on Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help reintroduce the jaguar to the Southwest, where it once roamed for hundreds of thousands of years before being whittled down to just one of the big cats known to survive in the region.

An endangered jaguar has been seen at least twice on trail cameras in southern Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains this year.

Two photos were taken of the cat in March and May according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service database.

The Center for Biological Diversity says it’s the second jaguar to be detected in the mountain range since 2016.

Wildlife officials say the photos could show a new, previously undetected jaguar or another cat detected in the nearby Chiricahua Mountains dozens of times in the last several years.

Jaguars are the third largest cat in the world and their historic range stretched from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon into Mexico.

Seven of the cats have been observed in the U.S. in the last two decades.