Latest jaguar spotted in Southern Arizona determined to be male

Conservationists have determined the sex of the fifth jaguar observed in Southern Arizona in the past 17 years.

Despite the hopes of some, Cinco is a boy.

Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for Sky Island Alliance, said researchers with nonprofit group confirmed the big cat to be a male late last year.

The University of Arizona’s Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center first detected the presence of the jaguar, which they named Cinco, in November, making him only the fifth jaguar to be spotted north of the United States-Mexico border since 2009.

No female jaguars have been seen in Arizona for more than 60 years, but researchers said that a breeding population might still be established as the third-largest big cats in the world, behind only lions and tigers, roam back and forth across the border.

Harrity said the Sky Island Alliance, which monitors wildlife in the immensely biodiverse Sky Island mountain ranges in Southern Arizona, said its researchers found out Cinco’s sex shortly after the Wild Cat center’s initial discovery after the jaguar was caught on one of the cameras it had set up.

“To put it bluntly, it had testicles,” he said. “You can see the back end in the photo.”

Wild Cat center leader Sue Malusa confirmed that Cinco’s sex was determined by the Sky Island Alliance, which does work that “complements” the efforts of her own team. But based on the initial images her own team had taken, she believed all along Cinco would be male.

“We were all hoping and praying for a female,” she said. “But for us who were working in the jaguar world, the shoulders and the bone structure kind of confirmed it was a male. But we couldn’t be 100% sure.”

‘If we allow them’

All of the jaguars recorded in the United States in the past two decades have been male. The last recorded female was fatally shot in 1963 in the state’s White Mountains by a hunter.

Harrity said Cinco’s presence in Southern Arizona was a sign that its ecosystem has remained hospitable for the apex predators. 

He said some researchers were hopeful that Cinco was female, indicating the possibility for jaguars to begin breeding again in the U.S. But, he added, there is still potential for female jaguars to migrate north into the region — but only if the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s plans to build 222 miles of “smart” border barriers are stopped or modified to accommodate the passage of the cats.

“All signs point to the fact that it’s possible, and it may be in our lifetime, that females will make it across the U.S. Mexico border if we allow them to,” he said.

On Wednesday, he said, border barrier construction had already started or would soon start through the Patagonia Mountains, the Huachuca Mountains and the Guadalupe Canyon area, all of which are critical jaguar habitats.

“This is just a remarkable reminder of how fortunate we are in the Sky Islands and in the region to even have jaguars,” he said. “I think it’s only a matter of time and not ignoring the needs of our ecosystem.”

‘When someone does listen’

Malusa at the Wild Cat center said researchers have seen a recent uptick in the number of spotted cats —both jaguars and ocelots— on the U.S. side of the border. It’s critical to see that momentum continue, she said.

“In the past six months, we’ve had three different ocelots and two different jaguars. That’s unprecedented,” she said.

In the years that the center had been conducting research, she said, they’d averaged about one jaguar and one ocelot in the nation at any given time, with a new cat detected every three to five years.

The Wild Cat center over the past 15 years has relied on a volunteer team of at least 40 specially-trained “citizen scientists,” who set up and monitor cameras year round, collect DNA samples, log data and inform the public of the center’s discoveries.

But, according to Harrity, the likelihood of a breeding and sustainable jaguar population in the U.S. would be reduced to zero if CBP’s plans were fulfilled.

CBP announced it would begin laying the groundwork for the new barriers in December, including 19 miles of 30-foot high bollards separated by four-inch gaps and 42 miles of a “secondary barrier,” through Yuma, Cochise and Pima counties.

The federal department also revealed plans to install fiber-optic cables, stadium-style lighting, surveillance camera and patrol and access roads along the border stretch.

The new barriers are funded through the nearly $51.6 million dedicated by the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to build walls across the nations’ 1,954-mile Southern border. CBP published a map, last updated in February, to track its progress.

The cheapest and easiest solution would be to simply stop building the wall, according to Harrity. Another would be to build the wall, but widen its passages for wildlife.

The existing border wall has some gaps for wildlife, he said, but none were large enough for animals the size of a jaguar to pass through.

The current wall also had floodgates, Harrity said, which could be left open for them. 

But Malusa remained hopeful for the return of a sustainable jaguar population to the United States, which is why her team was so dedicated to tracking the behaviors and movements of the big cats, particularly where they cross the border. It’s possible, she said, to maintain a secure border and ensure that the wildlife around it has access to its entire natural range.

“We need to be sure that, when someone does listen, we have the data to show them, ‘This is an access point for the species,” she said.

‘What recovery is about’

Northern jaguars are considered the largest field species in the Western Hemisphere.

Malusa told the Sentinel in August that because jaguars are apex predators that balance the Sonoran Desert’s prey population, shape the behavior of other wildlife, protect vegetation and sustain biodiversity. They’re also an “indicator species,” she said, which shows the ecosystem they inhabit has enough water and food for wildlife.

The southwestern United States had historically been part of the species migration range until the mid-20th century. By the 1960s, many had been slaughtered by U.S. government-sponsored programs and the remainder had been driven out by persecution by both the government and hunters.

“This isn’t new,” Malusa said Wednesday. “This is what recovery is about: doing everything possible to make sure they have access to their historical range.”

Some experts surmised that more recent instances of poaching below in Mexico and Central America, plus the poaching of animals they prey upon and drought conditions.

Wildlife poaching is illegal in Mexico, but the laws against it are rarely enforced, according to researchers.

The territorial nature of the apex predators, particularly males, might also be a contributor to their re-migration into the U.S., they said.

The eastern part of Southern Arizona is a prime habitat for jaguars, they said, and Cinco was the latest example that the ecosystem was still habitable for them after their prolonged absence.

Cinco’s discovery followed the detection of a fourth jaguar in August. 

The fourth cat, dubbed O:ṣhad Ñu:kudam by members of the Tohono O’odham Nation, had been initially detected in 2023. O:ṣhad Ñu:kudam, pronounced OH-shahd NOO-KOO-dum, is O’odham for “jaguar protector.”

Individual jaguars have unique spot patterns, allowing researchers to identify them as they are photographed at different times.

Sombra, a male, was photographed in the Chiricahua Mountains in 2017, after being captured by a trail camera in in the nearby Dos Cabezas Mountains in 2016.

A jaguar, named Yo’oko by students at Tucson’s Hiaki High School, was caught on camera in 2016, but was photographed dead in Sonora, Mexico, the next year. 

A jaguar called El Jefe was discovered in the Whetstone and Santa Rita Mountains prior to Yo’oko, first in 2011 and in 2015. El Jefe, or the boss, proved to be elusive. He’d disappeared after the 2015 sighting only to reappear in the U.S. about six years later in footage from trail cameras installed by Mexican conservation group Protección de la Fauna Mexicana A.C., or PROFAUNA.

Though U.S. environmental groups were glad to see El Jefe’s return, but concerned that the construction of the border wall and the addition of a massive, open-pit copper mine would deter him from coming back again.

Jaguars were initially listed as endangered by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1972, but the species was removed from the list eight years later.

The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the agency thrice to seek habitat protection for jaguars, but federal judge rejected the environmental group’s arguments in 2009, citing the fact that few jaguars were believed to be in the United States.

Jaguars are listed as “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.