JAGUARS
Ecuador is likely to have a higher density of jaguars than any other place on Earth. The Cloud Forests of Ecuador are arguably world's most biodiverse places. Its incredible riches include more species of insects in one hectare than the US and Canada combined, untold amounts of plant species, and six different types of large cats. Of those, none is more dominant than the jaguar, an "umbrella" species that can be used to measure the overall health of a forest and that, despite the Jaguar's extreme tendencies to prey on all sorts of animals, indirectly helps protect the forest's biodiversity. Jaguars aren't considered an endangered species, they're listed as "near threatened" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, but their habitats have been aggressively destroyed over the past few decades leading to their extinction in El Salvador and Uruguay. Shockingly, there are actually a few jaguars living in Arizona and New Mexico, so the United States stays off the "extinct" list. With the advent of camera traps (motion-or-heat-activated hidden cameras in the jungle) scientists have been able to more accurately measure jaguar densities throughout the Americas. Jaguars have huge patrolling ranges, with males sometimes covering as much as 40 square kilometres. Researchers have been able to identify 21 different Jaguars, which would put northeastern Ecuador far above anywhere else in the world in terms of the density of the species. (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/ecuador-may-have-more-jaguars-than-anywhere-else-on-earth) |