The North American jaguar is a population of the jaguar (Panthera onca) in North America.
This population has declined over decades, and is also referred to as the American jaguar and Central American jaguar.
Result of morphologic and genetic research failed to find evidence for subspecific differentiation.
The modern jaguar is thought to have descended from a pantherine ancestor in Asia that crossed the Beringian land bridge into North America during the Early Pleistocene.
From North America, it spread to Central and South America.
The ancestral jaguar in North America is referred to as Panthera onca augusta. It was about the size of a fully grown tiger.
In North America, the jaguar ranges from the southern part of the United States in the north, to the southern part of Central America in the south. Recently, jaguars of Mexican origin have been spotted in Arizona.
In 1799, Thomas Jefferson recorded the jaguar as an animal of the Americas. There are multiple zoological reports of jaguars in California, two as far north as Monterey in 1814 and 1826.
The coastal Diegueño (Kumeyaay people) of San Diego and Cahuilla Indians of Palm Springs had words for jaguar and the cats persisted there until about 1860.
The only recorded description of an active jaguar den with breeding adults and kittens in the United States was in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, prior to 1860.
In 1843, Rufus Sage, an explorer and experienced observer recorded jaguar present on the headwaters of the North Platte River 30–50 mi (48–80 km) north of Long's Peak in Colorado.
Cabot's 1544 map has a drawing of jaguar ranging over the Pennsylvania and Ohio valleys.
Historically, the jaguar was recorded in far eastern Texas, and the northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico. However, since the 1940s, the jaguar has been limited to the southern parts of these states.
Although less reliable than zoological records, Native American artifacts with possible jaguar motifs range from the Pacific Northwest to Pennsylvania and Florida.
Jaguars had been eliminated in the United States. A female was shot by a hunter in Arizona's White Mountains in 1963.
Arizona outlawed jaguar hunting in 1969, but by then no females remained and over the next 25 years only two male jaguars were found (and killed) in Arizona.
Then in 1996, Warner Glenn, a rancher and hunting guide from Douglas, Arizona, came across a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains and became a researcher on jaguars, placing webcams which recorded four more Arizona jaguars.
In 2009, a male jaguar named Macho B died shortly after being radio-collared by Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) officials in 2009.
In 2011, a male jaguar weighing 200 lb (91 kg) was photographed near Cochise in southern Arizona by a hunter after being treed by his dogs (the animal left the scene unharmed).
A second 2011 sighting of an Arizona jaguar was reported by a Homeland Security border pilot in June 2011, and conservation researchers sighted two jaguars within 30 mi (48 km) of the border between Mexico and the United States in 2010.
In September 2012, a jaguar was photographed in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona, the second such sighting in this region in two years. This jaguar has been photographed numerous times over the past nine months through June 2013.
This male jaguar – now named El Jefe (Spanish for "The Boss") – roams the Santa Rita Mountains, about 25 mi (40 km) south of downtown Tucson.
El Jefe is the fourth jaguar sighted in the Madrean Sky Islands in southern Arizona and New Mexico, over the last 20 years. He was most recently detected in 2022 over 100 miles south in Mexico.
On the 16th of November, 2016, a jaguar was spotted in the Dos Cabezas Mountains of Arizona, 60 mi (97 km) from the Mexican border, the farthest north one of these animals has been spotted in many decades.
On the 1st of December, 2016, another male jaguar was photographed on Fort Huachuca also in Arizona.
In February 2017, authorities revealed that a third jaguar had been photographed in November 2016, by the Bureau of Land Management in the Dos Cabezas Mountains, also in Arizona, some 100 km (62.1 miles) north of the border with Mexico.
The only picture obtained allowed experts to determine this is a different individual, but it does not reveal its gender.
In November 2023, Sky Island Alliance captured an image of a large jaguar walking along a wooded hillside in the remote Whetstone mountains of southern Arizona.
On Dec. 20, 2023 Jason Miller’s trail camera in the Huachuca Mountains (roaming southern Arizona) detected a new jaguar.
Sympatric predators include the mountain lion, grizzly bear and American black bear. There is evidence that El Jefe preyed on a black bear.
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