Revolutionizing the Field of Felid Conservation: Alan Rabinowitz and Jaguar Corridors

Photo Credit: Alexander Leisser, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Prior to around 2010, there was one generally accepted best method for conserving wild felid populations. Specifically, a conservationist would identify an area where species of big cats are declining in population, and target that area with conservation efforts to attempt to bring the population back from near extinction. Often, this would take the form of wildlife preserves that encompass the crucial area for big cat populations, in hopes that the population would be able to rebound if they were supplied with adequate habitat.

Though this method of conservation has led to many successes, it does not keep in mind the various other factors involved in maintaining a stable population that are hindered by habitat loss, fragmentation, and human development of the land. For example, an isolated population of tigers may encounter an extinction vortex if they are lacking in other populations of tigers to mix with, leading to low genetic diversity and thus higher risk of disease and unfavorable traits that may lead to extinction. Thus, the method of creating separate wildlife preserves for preserving specific high-risk populations falls short of being completely effective. These were the observations of Alan Rabinowitz, a felid conservation biologist and co-founder of Panthera, who noticed that his efforts of creating independent felid habitat preserves was not enough to truly save wild felids.

Taking these observations into consideration, Rabinowitz considered an alternative approach to felid conservation with his project in conserving jaguars throughout their range in Latin and South America. He was able to identify 90 known individual jaguar populations throughout their range through his research. However, instead of focusing on forming a jaguar preserve for each 90 populations, Rabinowitz decided to focus on the areas in which jaguars traveled, as well as their core habitat zones, forming a network of key conservation core habitats, as well as ecological corridors in between the core habitat zones. This method of conservation is known as range-wide conservation, and addresses the limitations with other forms of conservation by allowing for room for species to travel between core habitat zones. This allows for an increase in the genetic diversity within jaguar populations, as there is no longer the risk of inbreeding due to isolated species populations. In the paper Rabinowitz wrote regarding his findings, he stated that between 1-10 migrants, or species moving from one species population to another is needed to maintain genetic diversity. Without the creation of ecological corridors, however, achieving this number is not easy.

As the world continues to be changed by human development, our thinking in regards to conservation needs to continue to evolve. Although it may have once worked for endangered species to be protected by marking off a large area of land for their habitat, with more development happening today, there is a decrease in the amount of natural habitat that a species can occupy, let alone travel through. The ecological corridor is just one way in which the field of conservation is adapting to the ever changing landscape and climate, a crucial aspect of preserving our planet’s natural biodiversity.

References:

Rabinowitz, A., & Zeller, K. A. (2010). A range-wide model of landscape connectivity and conservation for the jaguar, Panthera onca. Biological Conservation, 143(4), 939–945. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2010.01.002

Rabinowitz , Alan. “Alan Rabinowitz: Saving Big Cats.” Www.youtube.com, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJdnSV5p-Yg. Accessed 5 Dec. 2023.