For several years it was considered extinct, but the great feline is back in the national territory. This week, experts from the Ministry of Livestock will seek to take a picture of it and then they shall decide who to handle its presence in the meadow
A deadly bite on the back of the neck ends with smaller preys. Bigger ones die by suffocation as they clamp their jaws around their throat. The puma then drags them to a separate place where it can eat in peace.
This specie (puma con color from Felidae family) was considered extinct for several years until 1970, when there were reported to have reappeared in the Uruguayan inland. Since then, accounts from different people, as well as parts of dead animals and even tracks of these huge carnivores, are the only trails considered by experts regarding their return to the country. There is evidence of their presence in Artigas, Río Negro, Tacuarembó, Cerro Largo, Rivera, Paysandú and even Lavalleja, where a puma wandered around the surroundings of a school for a few months.
Researchers agree that this big mammal is here. The problem is they do not even have a picture of it, nor know how many of them are there or which is its current situation. In other words, there are no instructions about what to do now or about how to preserve them.
In Search of the Feline
Some weeks ago, a producer from Rivera got in touch with the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) to report that a puma was eating his cattle. He sent pictures of the rests of the sheep the animal had killed and tore to pieces. Based on the pictures, experts in mammals from the MNHN agreed that it was a puma.
In Uruguay, this specie is considered in danger of extinction and there is a law that prohibits its hunt. It’s a priority for its preservation and to be included in the list of the National System of Protected Areas (SNAP).
Today, experts from the Fauna Department of the General Board of Natural Resources (Renare) of the Ministry of Livestock will travel to Rivera in the search of the animal. As the Head of the Department, Jorge Cravino, told Cromo, they intend to set three photography traps with infrared sensors that are activated when an object before them is moving.
“It would be interesting to trap a puma, put it a collar with GPS and follow it, but first it is important to have pictures of Uruguayan pumas,” said Cravino, who explained that it would also be very difficult to capture one of these as there are very few. The Head of Fauna, who has been working in the field for three decades, has seen tracks from pumas and even found one in 1986. However, he has not seen any picture of national pumas.
Renare experts will be in the area for three days and will return to Montevideo, hoping for the camera traps to do the rest.
Why Did It Come Back?
The puma is the American land mammal most widely spread, which explains that the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers it a “minor issue”. There are pumas from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. Enrique González from the MNHN considers that the theory stating that the pumas are “moving down” from Brazil is not accurate as animals “do not recognize borders”. Cravino agreed and stated that Cuchilla Negra, dividing Uruguay and Brazil, in a natural corridor without physical boundaries.
In fact, this solitary animal moves a lot along the territory. It covers from 20 to 30 kilometers per night and males end up moving 400 kilometers away from the place where they were born to avoid inbreeding. That may explain the reason why pumas living in Uruguay do not constitute a stable population in such a small territory.
According to Cravino, these animals are settled in the country, especially in the areas of gullies in the North-East.
González speculates that it may also imply what is known as the theory of metapopulations. “The total population of pumas is divided into subpopulations, which may become extinct in the less appropriate places,” he explained. That may have caused a “local extinction” as it happened in Uruguay but animals can then recolonize the territory.
It also enables to understand why is that a puma has been living for several months in the hills of Griffith Park in United States, next to the iconic “Hollywood” sign, as evidenced in a picture taken by the National Geographic thanks to a camera trap.
Know to Preserve
Illegal hunt is other of the threats for this feline. However, lack of awareness also is as it prevents us from protecting because there are no grounds for creating conservation policies.
In Uruguay, protected areas do not coincide with those where the puma can be currently found. Still, González explained that SNAP could not offer much assistance as they would need to protect a very vast area due to constant movement of this animal.
All experts agreed that despite the fact that the puma has been much studied, there are no incentives in the Uruguayan academic sphere to carry out research in order to report the number of pumas and their location, for example.
“Uruguay has farming and livestock interests everywhere, but governors and politicians have no experience in these issues,” Cravino expressed. “There is no national fauna inventory and there won´t be until a politician considers that Uruguay Natural also involves Uruguay in terms of its wildlife,” he added.
Free or in Zoos?
González states that, in his opinion, there are two possible measures: either take the pumas to zoos or reserve, or compensate those farmers affected when one of these animals kills their livestock.
Juan Villalba, director of biopark M´Bopicuá in Fray Bentos, has been working 42 years as international consultant on conservation of nature and zoos. Among other organizations, he worked 15 years for WWF and took part in the Ibero American Union of Zoos. He considers that “if pumas survive, they should have the chance to live in freedom”.
The puma does not represent a threat for humans and there are still enough preys for them to eat (as axis deer, capybaras, otters, birds) without the need of hunting cattle, Villalba explained. Moreover, he states that he does not believe in the indemnification system for farmers, something which would be very difficult to control and would soon become “distorted”.
In M’Bopicuá there is one puma. Its name is Zar, it is 9 years old and it is castrated and has no paws. It was donated by a family who had it as a pet, and as it cannot live with its peer, no zoo wanted it. It would not survive in the open field but, if that be the case, Villalba would set it free. That is actually one of the aims of the biopark: raise animals until these are ready to return to their habitats.
But if SNAP is not effective and paying farmers neither, what are the alternatives? Villalba thinks institutions should “raise awareness” in specific places which could host pumas in order to avoid people hunting them as it happened in 1996 in Río Negro and some years later in Cerro Largo. It would even be a good opportunity to exploit ecotourism related to this animal which is still hard to see.
Villalba has travelled a lot but he has only seen a puma very few times. Cravino only had the chance to face this feline almost 30 years ago. Carlos Prigioni, Environment head of the Municipality of Treinta y Tres states to be one of the few people, if not the only one in Uruguay, who stood in front of a puma for 10 minutes in Durazano. This was three decades ago. Now, it is necessary to find financing to carry out basic research. Maybe just then, in three decades or more, this kind of anecdotes will be usual.
