This photo, taken by Warner Glenn in 1996, is believed to be the first of a live jaguar in the United States.
When most people think of jaguars, they think of the jungles of Central and South America, not the remote desert ranges between the United States and Mexico.
That region is known as mountain lion country, and that's what rancher Warner Glenn thought he was tracking when he saddled up his mules on a summer day 12 years ago near Douglas, Arizona.
Glenn has hunted mountain lions for 60 years, since he was eight years old. But Glenn was stunned when he saw what his hunting dogs had chased up to a high mountain perch.
The rancher took what's believed to be the first photo of a live jaguar in the United States. But it wasn't his last. In 2006, some 40 miles away, Glenn and his hunting party again cornered a jaguar -- a different one.
Jaguars, an endangered species, have a breeding population in northern Mexico. Scientists believe there are no more than 120 left in the wild there.
It's believed that since 1910, the cats are only visitors north of the border. They have been virtually unstudied here until recently.
But Glenn and other conservationists worry that the possible return of breeding jaguars to the United States could be stopped in its tracks. The reason: the border fence.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/05 ... index.html
