Costa Rican developers forced to make protected paths for wild animals

WHEN commercial interests and environmental needs clash, it usually takes a major shift for the latter to prevail.

Hctor Porras-Valverdo tried to adopt a Zen attitude when he discovered recently that jaguars had turned two of his cows into carcasses.

The jaguar population may have dwindled, but the big cats still roam the forests in eastern Costa Rica, making their presence known by devouring the occasional chicken, pig or cow.

"I understand cats do this because they need to survive," said Porras-Valverdo, 41, a dairy farmer.

A few years ago his first reaction might have been to reach for a gun. But his farm now sits in the middle of land that Costa Rica has designated a "jaguar corridor" – a protected pathway that allows the stealthy nocturnal animals to safely traverse areas of human civilisation.

In the past few years, such corridors have been created in Africa, Asia and the Americas to help animals cope with 21st-century threats, from encroaching highways and retail developments to climate change.

These pathways represent an important shift in conservation strategy. Like many other nations, Costa Rica has traditionally tried to protect large species such as jaguars by creating sanctuaries.

But scientists have realised that connecting corridors are needed because many species rely for survival on the migration of a few animals from one region to another, to intermix gene pools and to repopulate areas devastated by natural disasters or disease.

"It was kind of an epiphany," said Alan Rabinowitz, a zoologist who is president of Panthera, an organisation that studies and promotes conservation of large cats. "We were giving them nice land to live on when what they were doing – and what they needed – was an underground railway."

He said critical migration routes were especially vulnerable in rapidly developing countries, where construction sites could spring up overnight, blocking the animals' passage. To correct this oversight, Costa Rica and other countries have begun identifying and protecting corridors for jaguars and other large mammals such as tigers, snow leopards and pandas.

The idea is not to stop building entirely, but to adjust development so that animals can move through landscapes that humans also occupy.

Residents must also be persuaded not to shoot wild intruders or otherwise drive them away when they are in transit, a shift in thinking that is already taking root here.

"Of course jaguars sometimes have conflicts with communities, but now people have been educated to change their thinking – not to see them as so dangerous," said Vctor Fallas Ramrez, an agronomist in Costa Rica.

When new techniques allowed scientists to take a first look at the jaguar genome a decade ago, they discovered that jaguars from the northern reaches of Mexico had exactly the same genetic makeup as those from the southern tip of South America.

That meant that some jaguars were moving up and down the Americas to breed; otherwise, the isolation of jaguar populations in different regions would have caused their genetic makeups to diverge. At least some males from Colombia were travelling to Panama to mate, and others were moving from Mexico to Belize.

"It was surprising, but it seemed to say they had one continuous habitat," Rabinowitz said.

Scientists were convinced that jaguars would never cross a water barrier as wide as the Panama Canal, smack in the middle of their extended habitat. But when they set up cameras near the canal, they discovered that occasionally a brave animal took the plunge, ensuring the continuity of genes in the north and south.

Costa Rica now requires developers to consider whether a new construction project would interrupt an essential corridor, and make other arrangements for jaguars to travel safely through the area.

The fact that jaguars and other large cat species travel at night and do not hunt when they are on the move makes it easier for them to co-exist with humans.

"The bottom line is big cats can live with people," Rabinowitz said. "That's not true of all animals."

While farmers are now willing to forgive a dead cow or two to allow jaguars to survive as a species, they are often reluctant to make larger sacrifices. Just outside Las Lomas, a proposed hydroelectric project would involve building a huge dam across a valley, creating a body of water a third of a mile wide and more than three miles long. As planned, it would block a jaguar corridor.

The new project will mean jobs, an increase in property values and improved basic services for the area, including roads and piped water, said Ramrez. And the community, he said, cannot just forsake all that.

"For us, and the jaguars, it's just an obstacle," said Roberto Salom, of Panthera, who is looking into alternative solutions, such as an animal bridge or a smaller dam.