Overlooked jaguar guardians: Indigenous territories and range-wide conservation of a cultural icon

Abstract

Indigenous territories (ITs) are an integral component of global conservation strategies. We evaluate the range-wide overlap of ITs and the distribution of the jaguar (Panthera onca), a Neotropical apex predator with considerable cultural significance among Indigenous Peoples. We quantified overlap between protected areas (PAs) and ITs among: (1) jaguar range, (2) the species’ core habitats, known as Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs), and (3) corridors connecting JCUs. We further evaluated deforestation rates between 2000 and 2020 among protected, unprotected, and indigenous portions of JCUs and corridors and compared jaguar density estimates among these land tenures. Our results indicate that ITs overlap 27.7% of jaguar range. South American JCUs and corridors, which comprise ~ 94% of jaguar distribution, experienced significantly less deforestation where ITs intersected PAs. We documented an unbalanced ratio of jaguar density estimates between indigenous and non-indigenous areas, highlighting the need for more representative sampling. Collaborative approaches for jaguar conservation, informed and guided by indigenous knowledge, can support more inclusive and effective monitoring that reduces dependence on external support.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-022-01754-8.

Introduction

Indigenous territories (ITs) cover ~ 25% of Earth’s land surface and contain as much as 60–80% of its biodiversity (Sobrevila 2008; O’Bryan et al. 2020). High biodiversity in ITs is attributable to factors including indigenous management practices, communal land tenure, significant cultural connections with native flora and fauna, and profound commitment to stewardship for future generations (Toledo 2001; Gorenflo et al. 2012; Levis et al. 2018). ITs have received increasing recognition for their contributions to forest conservation and climate change mitigation (Garnett et al. 2018; Schuster et al. 2019; Fa et al. 2020; Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2021). Indeed, indigenous occupation of tropical forests deters unregulated hunting and resource extraction at levels that, in numerous cases, surpasses protection from federal protected areas (PAs) (Zimmerman et al. 2001; Nepstad et al. 2006; Vuohelainen et al. 2012; Nolte et al. 2013; Blackman et al. 2017). However, besides hunting impacts, quantitative evaluations of biodiversity conservation in ITs are scarce and, for large mammals in the Neotropics, they are entirely lacking.

Due to its considerable cultural significance among Indigenous Peoples and widespread distribution spanning 18 countries, the jaguar (Panthera onca) is an ideal species to evaluate contributions of ITs to conservation at regional and continental scales. As the largest felid in the Americas, the jaguar is an integral component of the culture, folklore, and religious practices of Indigenous Peoples throughout Latin America (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975; Voss and Fleck 2017; Tirira et al. 2020). Since pre-colonial times, jaguars have featured prominently in the cultures of indigenous groups who view the animal as a symbol of spiritual strength, fertility, beauty, courage, and power (Covarrubias 1946; Saunders 1998; Kohn 2007).

Throughout jaguar range, there are ~ 550–600 distinct indigenous groups with a cumulative population of ~ 40 million people (ECLAC 2014; Mamo 2020). Each group has its own distinct autochthonous culture and language, exhibiting varying levels of compatibility with western conceptions and generalizations of jaguar conservation. Contemporary manifestations of jaguar relations among Indigenous Peoples vary from pervasive symbolism in myths and legends to representation of an alter-ego in nahualism, which refers to human conversion to a jaguar spirit or a rain-related god and protector (Saunders 1998). Among indigenous groups, such beliefs are commonly associated with tolerance and positive perceptions of jaguars (Rodrigues dos Santos et al. 2008; Figel et al. 2011; but see Knox et al. 2019).

Partly due to their widespread co-occurrence, indigenous cultures and jaguars face similar threats. For example, nearly one quarter of Amazonian ITs are overlapped by mining and petroleum concessions, both of which place intense pressures on indigenous livelihoods and jaguars (Espinosa et al. 2014; Walker et al. 2020). Other threats from road development, poaching, and deforestation have severely impacted indigenous cultures and eliminated ~ 54% of the jaguar’s historical range (Quigley et al. 2017; Espinosa et al. 2018; Begotti and Peres 2020; Ferrante et al. 2020). In the past decade alone, thousands of jaguars have been killed or displaced by fires and forest loss in the Amazon basin (Menezes et al. 2021). Similarly, endangered languages (i.e. languages with < 10 000 speakers) in the Western Hemisphere are most numerous in the Amazon (Gorenflo et al. 2012; Rehg and Campbell 2018).

The jaguar’s threatened status and unique monotypic species designation has engendered regional and range-wide conservation plans (Sanderson et al. 2002; Rabinowitz and Zeller 2010; Silveira et al. 2014; Ceballos et al. 2021). As a conservation strategy to maintain genetic diversity and prevent further declines, key populations and habitats were identified as Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs) (Sanderson et al. 2002) and corridors linking them were later proposed (Rabinowitz and Zeller 2010; Silveira et al. 2014). JCUs are defined as either: (1) areas with a stable prey base and adequate habitat capable of maintaining > 50 adult jaguars or (2) areas containing < 50 jaguars but with adequate habitat and a stable, diverse prey base that could potentially support an increased jaguar population (Sanderson et al. 2002). Corridors, identified remotely via least-cost path analyses, are potential travel pathways between JCUs (Rabinowitz and Zeller 2010).

Previous range-wide assessments for jaguars—which evaluated the species’ presence in relation to variables such as vegetation cover, elevation, human population density, and proximity to roads and settlements—produced distribution maps and identified priority areas for conservation (Sanderson et al. 2002; Rabinowitz and Zeller 2010; Olsoy et al. 2016). And trans-national evaluations, based on jaguar density studies from 80 sites, attempted to estimate the range-wide jaguar population (de la Torre et al. 2018; Jędrzejewski et al. 2018). However, none of these evaluations recognized the contributions of ITs to jaguar conservation. Indeed, jaguar populations in ITs outside PAs are regularly overlooked or undervalued by regional and range-wide conservation exercises.

In fact, until now, no systematic compilation of the role and contribution of ITs to jaguar conservation has been presented. To rectify this research gap, we constructed a database that includes systematic assessments of the co-occurrence of jaguar populations and ITs. Our objectives were to: (1) quantify and compare overlap between range-wide jaguar distribution, PAs, and ITs; (2) compare jaguar density estimates among these varying land tenures; and (3) evaluate deforestation rates (from 2000 to 2020) within indigenous and protected portions of jaguar distribution.

Materials and methods

Study area

Our study area comprised the entirety of jaguar range, which spans ~ 9 158 287 km² across 18 countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina (Quigley et al. 2017). We evaluated IT overlap with jaguar distribution by country because many jaguar conservation plans are designed and implemented at the national level (e.g. Ministerio del Ambiente and Wildlife Conservation Society-Ecuador 2014; Ceballos et al. 2021). Despite the occasional presence of roaming males in Arizona and New Mexico, breeding females have not been documented in the U.S. since 1910 (Babb et al. 2022); therefore, this country does not contain any JCUs or corridors and it was not included in our study (Quigley et al. 2017).

Indigenous territories and jaguar conservation

We define Indigenous Peoples as groups “descended from populations who inhabited a country before the time of conquest or colonization and who retain at least some of their own social, economic, cultural, and political institutions” (sensu Fa et al. 2020). We compiled a georeferenced database using the best available and publicly accessible national and regional datasets (Supplementary Materials Table S1). The database includes government-recognized and titled ITs, as well as territories not legally recognized, but inhabited by indigenous groups. In cases where no GIS compatible maps were found, the maps were georeferenced and converted into shapefiles using ArcGIS Pro (v. 10.8.1, ESRI Inc., Redlands, CA, USA).

To expand upon previous range-wide jaguar studies and enable comparisons with them, we overlapped ITs with three range-wide jaguar distribution polygons: (1) the species’ range as assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Quigley et al. 2017), (2) JCUs, and (3) jaguar corridors.

By country, we estimated the area of the jaguar’s distribution that overlapped with ITs, PAs, and the intersection of ITs and PAs using the sf package in R (Pebesma 2018; R Core Team 2020). We also estimated overlap of JCUs and jaguar corridors with ITs, PAs, and their intersection. We obtained the PA shapefiles from The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN 2021). We included all PA categories from this database except areas in Brazil designated as “Indigenous Areas” because these areas do not have official protection status (Baragwanath and Bayi 2020). We used ArcGIS Pro for data visualization and map creation.

Jaguar density estimates in protected, unprotected, and indigenous areas

Population density is an important demographic metric used in species conservation planning (Mena et al. 2020; Gil-Sánchez et al. 2021). To compare jaguar density estimates across the varying land tenures, we used jaguar density databases compiled by Jędrzejewski et al. (2018) and Foster et al. (2020), complemented by literature searches via the Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar using the following Boolean strings: (“population density” OR “density”) AND (“jaguar” OR “Panthera onca”) AND (“capture-recapture” OR “mark-recapture” OR “capture-mark-recapture” OR “camera traps”). We conducted searches in March 2022. For inclusion in our analyses, we screened articles to remove duplicate studies and to determine the following criteria: (1) clearly presented non-spatial and/or spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) jaguar density estimates derived from camera-traps, (2) jaguar density estimates that included measures of precision (e.g. standard errors, confidence intervals, credible intervals), (3) inclusion of essential survey design characteristics such as size and location of the study area, camera location and spacing, number of sites sampled, and duration and season of sampling, (4) sample sizes of ≥ 5 jaguars detected, (5) camera trap polygons larger than male jaguar home range sizes in the given study biome, and (6) published in a peer-reviewed publication. Surveys that fail to meet these criteria generate uninterpretable and biased results, including severe overestimation of jaguar densities (Tobler et al. 2013).

Deforestation and land tenure in jaguar range

We further estimated deforestation rates of jaguar range, JCUs, and jaguar corridors overlapping both ITs and PAs using high resolution Landsat satellite imagery from 2000–2020 (Hansen et al. 2013). We accessed these raster maps from the Global Forest Change dataset (version 1.7), which measures the removal of trees (tree height > 5 m) at a spatial resolution of 30 m × 30 m (Hansen et al. 2013). We estimated forest cover for the year 2000 by reclassifying the Hansen et al. (2013) tree cover raster into forest and non-forest pixels using a 50% tree cover threshold, which was the value found to produce the smallest residuals for large-scale deforestation analyses (Hansen et al. 2014). Subsequently, we estimated forest cover for 2020 by subtracting the pixels where deforestation occurred and adding the pixels with reforestation up to that year from the same database. We then quantified the number of pixels classified as forest for the years 2000 and 2020 for ITs, PAs, as well as other land management types (e.g. private lands) within jaguar distribution. Finally, we estimated deforestation rates between both years for each land tenure type within jaguar range, JCUs, and corridors. We analyzed the data using the Google Earth Engine platform (https://earthengine.google.com/) and the rgee package in R (Aybar et al. 2020; R Core Team 2020).

Results

Jaguar range and indigenous territories

We found that ITs comprise ~ 27.7% of the jaguar’s range-wide distribution (Fig. 1). ITs exceed PA coverage in eight jaguar range countries: Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru (Table 1, Supplementary Materials Table S2, Fig. S1). Range-wide, Mexico and Central American countries exhibited the greatest IT overlap proportional to land area, with an average of 40.8% (± 15.7% SD). In this region, we found the most overlap for Mexico (~ 94 338 km², 32.1%), Nicaragua (~ 36 049 km², 59%) and Panama (~ 26 259 km², 56%). The average IT overlap for jaguar-range countries of South America was 20.9% (± 19.6% SD). However, considering the much greater area of jaguar range in South America, ITs on this continent had the higher extension of jaguar range inside ITs totaling ~ 2 320 575 km², whereas Mexico and Central America cover ~ 211 974 km². By area, we found the greatest overlap between jaguar range and ITs in Brazil (~ 1 102 213 km², 24%), followed by Venezuela (~ 319 345 km², 50.2%), and Colombia (~ 312 338 km², 35.3%).

Fig. 1.

Overlap between indigenous territories (ITs), protected areas (PAs) and jaguar range. Note the intersection between some ITs and PAs

Table 1.

An overview of land tenure across the 18 countries encompassing jaguar range

Jaguar range country	Area of range (km2)	Only PA coverage (%)	Only IT coverage (%)	PA/IT coverage (%)	Total PA coverage (%)	Total IT coverage (%)	Other coverage (%)
Argentina	72 878	18.7	23.2	6.4	25.1	29.6	51.7
Belize	21 946	28.0	25.4	8.8	36.8	34.2	37.9
Bolivia	819 005	23.1	17.7	5.6	28.8	23.3	53.5
Brazil	4 606 694	24.9	21.1	2.9	27.7	24.0	51.2
Colombia	883 542	12.4	30.8	4.5	16.9	35.3	52.3
Costa Rica	40 847	24.2	10.1	3.5	27.7	13.6	62.3
Ecuador	94 693	11.3	47.1	17.3	28.6	64.4	24.2
Guatemala	43 160	43.7	37.9	10.8	54.5	48.7	7.0
Fr. Guiana	83 577	43.3	0.6	7.8	51.1	8.4	48.3
Guyana	210 978	5.4	11.6	3.3	8.7	14.9	79.7
Honduras	49 889	24.1	16.5	25.6	49.7	42.1	33.8
Mexico	293 903	14.7	26.8	5.3	19.9	32.1	53.2
Nicaragua	61 212	24.4	29.6	29.3	53.7	59.0	16.7
Panama	46 923	14.3	26.8	29.2	43.6	56.0	29.7
Paraguay	259 190	17.0	3.5	0.4	17.4	3.8	79.2
Peru	784 979	20.2	28.9	4.6	24.7	33.4	46.4
Suriname	147 044	14.3	0.1	0.1	14.3	0.1	85.6
Venezuela	636 662	19.8	10.5	39.7	59.4	50.2	30.1

Jaguar Conservation Units and indigenous territories

Range-wide, Jaguar Conservation Units (JCUs) exhibited an overlap of ~ 1 579 270.55 km² (38.96%) with ITs. Of the 75 JCUs range-wide, the average proportion (± SD) of overlap with ITs was 0.28 (0.31) and 21 JCUs had ≥ 50% of their area overlapped by ITs. These included some of the largest JCUs, such as Xingu (429 592 km²) in Brazil, Canaima (81 923 km²) in Venezuela, and the Cuyabeno/Yasuni/Pastaza complex (47 687 km²) in Ecuador. Among Mexican and Central American JCUs, the greatest overlap with ITs occurred with Panama (69.3%), followed by Nicaragua (61.1%) and Honduras (58.1%).

Our results revealed that JCUs in South America were disproportionately overlapped by ITs (Fig. 2). Some of the largest, most intact JCUs corresponded with ITs in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil. Venezuela and Ecuador exhibited the greatest overlap between JCUs and ITs, with 85.5% and 71.8%, respectively. In the Amazon JCU, which is the largest JCU range-wide, ITs overlap some 41.5% of jaguar distribution.

Fig. 2.

Proportions of protected areas and indigenous territories in Jaguar Conservation Units (A, C) and Jaguar Corridors (B, D)

Jaguar corridors and indigenous territories

Range-wide, jaguar corridors exhibited an overlap of ~ 293 067 km² (23.6%) with ITs. Of the 79 corridors range-wide, the average proportion (± SD) of overlap with ITs was 0.21 (0.28). A total of 61 corridors were at least partially overlapped by ITs and 13 had ≥ 50% of their area overlapped by these territories. Mexico and Central America countries had a higher proportional area of jaguar corridors in ITs (40.3%) than South American countries (18.6%). Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela had the greatest proportion of jaguar corridors overlapping ITs, with 83.9%, 65.5%, and 55.3%, respectively.

Jaguar density estimates in protected, unprotected, and indigenous areas

Our literature search and criteria requirements generated 48 unbiased jaguar density estimates range-wide (Supplementary Materials Table S3, Fig. S2). Statistically rigorous jaguar density estimates were produced in Mexico (n = 8), Central America (n = 5), and South America (n = 35). More jaguar density studies were conducted in non-indigenous PAs (54%; n = 26) and in non-indigenous, unprotected areas (25%; n = 12) than in PAs overlapped by ITs (15%; n = 7) or in indigenous, unprotected areas (6%; n = 3). SECR densities ranged from 0.17 to 12.4 jaguars/100 km² across all land tenures, with a mean and median of 2.74 and 2.44 jaguars/100 km² in areas overlapped by ITs (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

Range-wide jaguar SECR density estimates in indigenous territories (IT), protected areas overlapped by ITs (IT/PA), unprotected, nonindigenous lands (Other), and PAs not overlapped by ITs (PA)

Deforestation rates in JCUs, corridors, protected areas and indigenous territories

Overall, 7% of forested areas (503 541 km²) in jaguar range were lost between 2000 and 2020. ITs, PAs, and their intersection experienced deforestation rates of 2–3% from 2000 to 2020, while other areas (e.g. private lands) lost forests at a rate of 12%. Deforestation rates in ITs overlapping jaguar habitat varied between South and Central America, with the ITs in the former experiencing a 3% decline, while the latter experienced 16% forest loss, the largest proportion of any land use analyzed (Fig. 4). Similar trends were observed for JCUs and corridors, although JCUs had lower deforestation rates than corridors (Supplementary Materials Tables S4, S5, Figs. S3, and S4).

Fig. 4.

Deforestation between 2000–2020 in jaguar range, Jaguar Conservation Units, and Jaguar Corridors

Compared to PAs, ITs exhibited significantly lower deforestation rates in Colombia, Honduras, and Venezuela.

Discussion

We highlight the long-overlooked contributions of ITs to jaguar conservation. This is the first study to evaluate overlap between ITs and the range-wide distribution of a large carnivore. Our results indicate that habitat and connectivity in jaguar range has largely been maintained by indigenous groups. Their contributions are highlighted by the 39% range-wide overlap between ITs and JCUs, which contain the most robust jaguar populations. The low deforestation rates and high overlap with ITs in South America has particular significance for jaguar conservation in the Amazon because this biome represents ~ 85% of the species’ distribution (Quigley et al. 2017). In South America, ITs exhibited comparable levels of forest maintenance to PAs, corroborating previous research (Nepstad et al. 2006; Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2021).

Several reasons may account for the extensive overlap between ITs and jaguar habitat. For one, IT systems of communal land tenure—which generally manage landscapes as inter-connected ecosystems (Sobrevila 2008)—are often more compatible for conservation compared to western systems of individual property rights and jurisdictional delineations that can be bought and sold (Baragwanath and Bayi 2020). Whereas undesignated public lands of Latin America are undergoing intensive deforestation (Azevedo-Ramos and Moutinho 2018), prior studies have consistently documented significantly less agricultural development in areas owned and managed by Indigenous Peoples (Schuster et al. 2019; Begotti and Peres 2020; FAO and FILAC 2021; Sze et al. 2021). For example, extensive cattle ranching is much less common in ITs, compared to nonindigenous communities (Vasco et al. 2018). This is important because livestock expansion is Latin America’s largest driver of forest loss (Goldman et al. 2020) and human-jaguar conflict—usually attributable to jaguar depredation on livestock—is a chronic, range-wide threat to the species (Castaño-Uribe et al. 2016).

Many indigenous settlements of Latin America occur in the lowlands at close proximities to rivers and streams (Kesler and Walker 2015), areas favored by jaguars (Figel et al. 2019). Given these overlapping preferences for riparian areas, an integral component of conservation is understanding and appreciating relationships between people and jaguars, which remain an important element of cultural identity in indigenous cultures (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975; Saunders 1998; Figel et al. 2011; Tirira et al. 2020). The common property systems of ITs, which do not dichotomize nature and society (FAO and FILAC 2021), highlight the importance of understanding jaguar research and conservation from the perspective of people actually responsible for managing the land on which the species occurs.

Indeed, many indigenous societies consider animals (including jaguars) to be persons, with different physical forms but similar self-awareness as humans (Kohn 2007; Shaffer et al. 2018). Thus, relationships among Indigenous Peoples and other species are often governed by many of the same societal rules present in ITs. For example, many indigenous groups have reciprocal relationships with animal persons. Hunting is often viewed in the context of gift giving, whereby certain animals “give” themselves to hunters. Thus, levels of prey availability for humans are often associated with the extent to which indigenous hunters have maintained respect for local customs, food practices, and taboos (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020). In some Mexican ITs, these taboos are officially incorporated into well-enforced estatutos comunales (community laws) that clearly prohibit the hunting of jaguars, brocket deer (Mazama americana), and several other prey species (Figel 2008). Likewise, widespread taboos against hunting have afforded protection to jaguar prey species in Amazonian ITs (Colding and Folk 2001; Politis and Saunders 2002).

Our findings, which documented the lowest deforestation rates when ITs converge with PAs, indicate a high degree of compatibility between indigenous activities, preservation of intact forests, and the conservation of jaguar habitat. Given extensive indigenous occupation of transboundary areas, engagement with indigenous leaders will be especially critical for preserving large, intact ecosystems and maintaining intact jaguar habitats along country borders. These areas often have insecure tenure, which can increase their vulnerability to encroachment from squatters and extractive industries such as logging and mining (Robinson et al. 2014). Limited federal oversight exacerbates government inefficiency to enforce protection in remote, transboundary regions far beyond state control (FAO and FILAC 2021). By contrast, it is in precisely these areas where indigenous communities are well-positioned to monitor biodiversity and shield lands from outside threats (Luzar et al. 2011; Shaffer et al. 2018). Numerous indigenous communities already patrol and monitor their territories, deterring exploitive activities and preventing land-clearing and settlement by cattle ranchers, miners, and other intruders (FAO and FILAC 2021). For example, indigenous groups of Oaxaca continue to autonomously monitor biodiversity and document jaguars in their community forests (Espinoza-Ramírez et al. 2017; Lavariega et al. 2020; Prisciliano-Vázquez et al. 2021). Rather than replacing these local programs, our results strongly suggest a need for additional jaguar research in ITs that includes indigenous peoples in the planning and execution of jaguar monitoring protocols.

To support more participatory and comprehensive jaguar studies in ITs, we recommend protocols that involve local indigenous knowledge in project design, execution, and evaluation (sensu Lavariega et al. 2020). Whereas scientific estimates of jaguar population parameters remain constrained by patchily distributed camera-trap studies (Supplementary Materials Fig. S2), local ecological knowledge of jaguars is widespread in ITs and already formed over centuries of observation (Figel et al. 2011; Voss and Fleck 2017). This knowledge, ideally garnered by the formation of indigenous “jaguar guardian” teams, could improve population monitoring of the species by informing historical baseline data and more effectively detecting changes in habitat occupancy. Similar programs already exist in Australia where more than 100 indigenous ranger groups receive government support to combine traditional ecological knowledge with scientific monitoring for the management and protection of their land, sea, and culture (Australian Government 2020). Australia’s pioneering program could provide a model for more participatory involvement in ITs of jaguar-range countries.

Except for Suriname, all jaguar-range countries have laws that recognize indigenous communities’ collective rights over their ancestral territories (FAO and FILAC 2021). Furthermore, all jaguar-range countries are party to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which calls for the implementation of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) (CBD Article 6 1992). Thus, efforts to formally title ITs in jaguar habitat should receive greater attention in NBSAPS because this is one of the most effective strategies for halting deforestation and natural resource extraction (Baragwanath and Bayi 2020). Analyses from a 7500 km² study area in the Peruvian Amazon found that titling ITs reduced forest loss by more than three-quarters between 2002 and 2005 (Blackman et al. 2017). Over a longer period (2000–2012), deforestation in titled ITs of the Bolivian, Brazilian, and Colombian Amazon was only one-third to one-half of deforestation in other adjacent forests (Ding et al. 2016).

Whereas insecure land tenure often leads to conflict and environmental degradation, securing land rights can lead to dual gains for the conservation of forests and jaguars (Robinson et al. 2014; Mena et al. 2020). For example, sustainable timber production generates considerable financial benefits for many tenure-secure indigenous communities, with minimal impacts on jaguar populations (Polisar et al. 2017). In some cases, selective logging, shifting cultivation, and other forms of habitat management by Indigenous Peoples can even enhance habitat quality for key jaguar prey species (Smith 2005; Roopsind et al. 2017).

Also, payment for ecosystem services programs have reduced deforestation in jaguar range countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru; these initiatives provide economic incentives to hundreds of indigenous communities, supporting the conservation of > 4 million hectares of tropical forest (FAO and FILAC 2021). And, in southern Mexico, indigenous communities with long-standing tenure have implemented impressive community governance regimes (e.g. Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas—ICCAs) that support conservation of intact forests and jaguar populations (Figel et al. 2011; Bray et al. 2012; Prisciliano-Vázquez et al. 2021).

Unfortunately, most of the JCUs with the greatest proportions of IT overlap have not been systematically surveyed for jaguars. Two recent exceptions documented healthy populations of jaguars and their prey in ITs of the northwest Amazon basin (Mena et al. 2020; Gil-Sánchez et al. 2021). Robust jaguar populations were also identified in Bolivia’s Kaa-Iya National Park, a 34 677 km² PA co-managed by Izoceno-Guarani Indigenous Peoples (Maffei et al. 2004). Compared to PAs, however, data on jaguar occurrence and distribution in ITs are very scarce. Further density estimation from ITs will enable a more representative sampling of range-wide jaguar populations. This gap could be filled by partnerships between ITs and academic institutions or non-governmental organizations for the provision of technical support, scientific training, and research equipment to support indigenous-led jaguar research.

Despite the benefits of ITs for jaguars, conservation in these areas has its limitations. For example, rural out-migration has significantly weakened community organization and self-governance of forests in areas of Mexico and Central America where corridors and JCUs exhibited marked forest loss since 2000 (Robson and Klooster 2019). Abandonment of ancestral homelands impedes the transfer of indigenous knowledge from one generation to the next, a phenomenon with considerable implications for jaguar habitats. For example, research from the Bolivian Amazon shows that communities exhibiting greater traditional ecological knowledge tend to maintain greater forest intactness compared to communities that lack such knowledge (Paneque-Galvez et al. 2018).

In addition, high rates of subsistence hunting and human-jaguar conflict have intensified threats in some ITs (Koster 2008; Figel et al. 2011; Knox et al. 2019). Some of the most intensely hunted species in ITs–such as collared peccaries (Pecari tajacu) and armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus)–also constitute the jaguar’s preferred prey (Jerozolimski and Peres 2003; Koster 2008; Espinosa et al. 2014). Even low levels of hunting can severely deplete populations of important jaguar prey species such as white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) (Reyna-Hurtado et al. 2010).

Conclusion

The ecological integrity of ITs is likely to determine the maintenance of habitat connectivity for jaguars. From practical, legal, and ethical standpoints, collaborations with Indigenous Peoples will be central to successful implementation of range-wide jaguar conservation initiatives. We hope our study brings greater attention to the significance of titling and partnerships with Indigenous Peoples, as they are the most important, on-the-ground alliances for jaguar conservation. With greater recognition of their contributions to conservation, ITs could have important benefits for other threatened, wide-ranging Neotropical mammals such as tapirs (Tapirus spp.), spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus), white-lipped peccaries, giant anteaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), and bush dogs (Speothos venaticus). Collaborative approaches for the conservation of jaguars and sympatric threatened mammals, informed and guided by indigenous knowledge and formalized in programs such as NBSAPs, can further enhance indigenous-led monitoring and reduce dependence on external support.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Biographies

Joe J. Figel

is a research fellow at the Laboratorio de Conservación Colombia. He is currently focused on the research and conservation of large, solitary felids in equatorial rainforests. He is also interested in montane ecosystems and indigenous territories in the tropics.

Sebastian Botero-Cañola

is the director of the Laboratorio de Conservación Colombia. His research interests include mammalogy, spatial ecology, and parasitology and his main goal is to conduct sound scientific research that is relevant for biodiversity conservation.

Mario C. Lavariega

is an Associate Professor at the Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación para el Desarrollo Integral Regional Unidad Oaxaca, Instituto Politécnico Nacional. His research is focused on community-based conservation.

María Delfina Luna-Krauletz

is a professor and researcher at the Universidad de la Sierra Juárez, Oaxaca and member of the Chinantec Indigenous Peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico. Her research includes community-based conservation, wildlife ecology and conservation, and environmental education.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.