The research was led by Guilherme Costa Alvarenga of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford and the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development in Tefé, Brazil, with senior authorship shared by Żaneta Kaszta and Samuel Cushman of the Department of Biology at the University of Southern Denmark. What sets the work apart from earlier continental mapping exercises is its empirical foundation. Previous range-wide connectivity models for jaguars leaned heavily on expert opinion, essentially asking specialists where they believed animals could move. The new analysis instead builds its picture from the actual recorded movements of jaguars tracked across much of the species’ range, allowing the researchers to construct a model grounded in how the cats really behave on the landscape rather than how humans assume they do.

From the GPS trajectories, the team identified 307 core living areas that support high levels of predicted jaguar movement, along with 176 corridors that link those cores together. In connectivity science, core areas function as the population strongholds where animals live, breed and concentrate their activity, while corridors are the landscape threads that allow dispersing individuals, and with them their genes, to flow between those strongholds. Together, these mapped elements provide the first empirically grounded, range-wide portrait of how jaguar populations across Mexico, Central America and South America may remain connected in the face of accelerating habitat loss and fragmentation, two of the most serious threats facing wide-ranging carnivores everywhere.

The single most striking finding is the overwhelming importance of one vast South American stronghold. A connected landscape spanning parts of the Amazon, the Llanos, the Pantanal and the Chaco covers approximately 6.5 million square kilometres across 11 countries and ranked as the most important core habitat for jaguar connectivity in the entire analysis. This single region accounted for the vast majority of predicted movement density in the model, meaning that the bulk of the species’ potential for gene flow and dispersal is concentrated in this enormous swath of northern and central South America. For conservation planners, the message is clear: the fate of most of the world’s jaguars is tied to the fate of this interconnected Amazonian and surrounding lowland complex.

Outside that central stronghold, however, the picture grows considerably darker. The analysis identified major connectivity gaps in parts of Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the Atlantic Forest, the coastal rainforest belt of eastern South America that has already been reduced to a small fraction of its original extent. In these regions, many jaguar populations appear increasingly isolated, cut off from one another by agricultural land, pastures, roads and expanding human settlement. Isolation carries real biological consequences: without the movement of individuals between populations, gene flow slows, inbreeding risk rises, and local extinctions become harder to reverse because recolonisation from neighbouring areas is no longer possible.

Samuel Cushman framed the species’ situation as one of remarkable strength shadowed by real fragility. Jaguars, he noted, are in a stronger position than many other large carnivores precisely because they still retain an extensive connected stronghold in South America, a luxury that lions, tigers and wolves in much of their respective ranges no longer enjoy. At the same time, the study’s results show that connectivity is far from secure across the species’ entire range. Several populations outside the Amazon now depend on relatively narrow connections, thin ribbons of traversable habitat that could be severed if habitat conversion continues at its current pace. The loss of even a single critical link in such a chain could isolate an entire regional population.

The team did not stop at modelling connectivity between existing jaguar strongholds. In a second, complementary analysis, they examined connectivity among 905 protected areas and Indigenous lands across the jaguar’s range, identifying 507 potential corridors and highlighting specific locations where conservation action could strengthen future movement. This dual approach proved to be one of the study’s methodological strengths. Connectivity modelling based on current jaguar populations offers the most realistic representation of present-day conditions, showing where animals are actually moving today. The protected-area analysis, by contrast, reveals potential opportunities, places where restoring or maintaining habitat links between conserved lands could rebuild connectivity even where jaguar movement has already been disrupted.

The findings arrive at a moment when connectivity has moved to the centre of international biodiversity strategy. Conservation organisations and governments increasingly recognise that protecting isolated patches of habitat is not enough; the spaces between them matter just as much. Maintaining connections between populations helps sustain gene flow, facilitates the natural dispersal of young animals seeking new territories, and reduces the risk of local extinctions by allowing recolonisation after local losses. For a species like the jaguar, which requires enormous territories and ranges across dozens of national borders, connectivity conservation is inherently a transboundary enterprise, demanding cooperation among the 11 or more countries that share the species’ fate.

The authors are careful to note an important caveat: the corridors identified in the study represent modelled pathways rather than confirmed movement routes, and field validation remains necessary before they can be treated as ground truth. Models built from GPS data are powerful, but they are still inferences about where movement is likely, not camera-trap records of animals crossing specific valleys. Nevertheless, the researchers believe the maps offer a practical framework for prioritising conservation action across the jaguar’s range. As Kaszta explained, the results identify where connectivity appears strongest, where it is most vulnerable, and where future conservation efforts could have the greatest impact, giving governments and NGOs a shared, evidence-based blueprint.

The researchers hope the findings will guide habitat protection, restoration programmes and transboundary conservation initiatives designed to keep jaguar populations connected under mounting pressure from land-use change. In practical terms, that could mean safeguarding narrow corridor pinch-points before they are converted to farmland, restoring forest links in the Atlantic Forest and Central America, and ensuring that Indigenous lands, which the analysis showed to be integral to the connectivity network, remain protected. For a species that once ranged across the entire Americas and now survives in a fragmented fraction of that domain, the new maps represent both a warning and an opportunity: the science now shows precisely where the threads of jaguar connectivity run, and which of those threads are closest to snapping.

Subject of Research: Range-wide connectivity and movement corridors of jaguar populations across the Americas

Article Title: Largest-ever jaguar analysis identifies how jaguar populations are connected across the Americas

Article References: Largest-ever jaguar analysis identifies how jaguar populations are connected across the Americas. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: jaguar, connectivity, corridors, GPS tracking, habitat fragmentation, Amazon, Pantanal, Atlantic Forest, conservation, protected areas, gene flow, Global Change Biology