Unfortunately, the jaguar’s range has decreased by half in the last 100 years due to deforestation and agricultural activities, resulting in reduced and even extinct jaguar populations in some countries. Despite numerous conservation efforts, their populations continue to decline.
Human-driven activities including hunting, destruction of forest habitat, loss of prey species, and human-wildlife conflict are also impacting jaguar populations. Jaguars were once hunted for their pelts until the 1970s, when stricter laws and new protections prohibited such activity. Now it appears that with increasing Chinese investment in Latin America, demand for jaguar parts, like fangs and claws, is rising again, driving illegal jaguar hunting and poaching, even in strongholds like the Amazon.
Since 2017, WWF has been monitoring the populations of this emblematic species in the Napo-Putumayo Corridor—740,000 acres of forest (nearly the size of Yosemite National Park) that spans through Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
