Ranches in Costa Rica occasionally overlap with jaguar and puma hunting areas, creating conflict that can sometimes be unavoidable. But with the help of conservationists, ranchers are now able to prevent both cattle and predator deaths, Mongabay contributor Darío Chinchilla reported for Mongabay Latam.
In communities like Lomas Azules, when a jaguar (Panthera onca) or puma (Puma concolor) killed a cow it would be at least a $1,000 loss for a rancher. Previously, there was nothing that environmental authorities could do, and frustrated farmers wanted to kill the wildcats to prevent further losses, rancher Wagner Durán tells Chinchilla.
But a Latin American initiative called the Unit for the Attention for Conflicts with Felines (UACFel) has helped create practical solutions for local ranchers. UACFel was created, in part, by Daniel Corrales, a biologist who grew up in a local ranching family. It’s a collaboration between the wildcat conservation NGO Panthera and the Costa Rican environmental authorities.
UACFel collaborates with farmers to install electric fences, which help keep the big cats out of ranch areas; at least 160 ranches now have the fences.
Additional water troughs on ranches also keep the herds from venturing in search of water into forested areas, where the big cats are.
The initiative also introduced the use of water buffalos (Bubalus bubalis) mixed in with cattle to help ward off predators. Chinchilla writes that the buffalos, native to Asia, where they evolved alongside tigers, are more instinctually defensive of predators and able to alert the herd to impending threats. They’re also low-maintenance, hardy animals that are resistant to heat and eat weeds that cattle won’t.
UACFel ranchers use an app to monitor predation data, recording of the type of predator and photo evidence of the attacks. The more than 500 predation reports between 2013 and July 2024 have been used to create a predation hotspot map, which showed most jaguar activity in the north, with most pumas further south, Chinchilla reports.
There were 201 puma attacks and 156 by jaguars. Corrales, who works with both Panthera Costa Rica and Project for Cat-Cattle Coexistence, said puma attacks are more scattered across a larger area, meaning they actually attack less frequently but in more locations.
He said the map shows that Costa Rica’s national network of biological corridors is working well. The information also informs UACFel in its work among farms near Tortuguero National Park, Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge and Mixto Maquenque Wildlife Refuge.
In addition to preventing economic losses among ranchers, the initiative has also led to a decline in hunting of the wildcats. “When we started, we identified 27 hunters,” Durán told Mongabay, “and now there are only four left who are still causing trouble.”
Read Darío Chinchilla’s full report here.
Banner image of a jaguar with a fish, courtesy of Andrea Reyes/Jaguares en la Selva.
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