ENDANGERED SPECIES UPDATE

Endangered Species Updates
January 14, 2008

Change in Date for First JAGCT Meeting in 2008


To: Interested Parties
From: Terry B. Johnson, Chair

The Jaguar Conservation Team (JAGCT) public meeting scheduled for January 24 in Lordsburg NM has been canceled. The JAGCT will next meet on March 13 (Thursday) in Lordsburg NM at the Lordsburg Civic Center, 313 East 4th Street; phone (575) 542-9615. More details on the meeting will be disseminated 30 days in advance of this meeting.

The change in date for this meeting was necessary due to staffing issues and lack of availability of the Civic Center on dates between January 24 and March 13. On the former count, Bill Van Pelt (AGFD), who has been the primary staff support for the JAGCT since its inception, has just changed jobs to focus entirely on prairie dog conservation across 11 cooperating states. Although Bill will remain an AGFD employee, he is assigned entirely to (and paid by) the Western Association of State Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) for the prairie dog conservation work that he, Duane, and I started many years ago. Although the change means great things for WAFWA and prairie dogs, and I congratulate Bill for seizing the opportunity, the hole he leaves behind in jaguar and wolf work is deep and dark. For the jaguar, this means that Tim Snow (AGFD), Jim Stuart (NMDGF), and I must pick up the considerable slack left behind by Bill. For me, that will be a real challenge, because I am still recovering from medical problems, and it is taking more time than anticipated to pick up from where I left the jaguar and Mexican wolf in August 2007. Physically I came back a while ago, but mentally I just came back last week. Regardless, I anticipate completing re-entry for the jaguar, and catching up with previous work on the long-awaited Conservation Strategy and other pending tasks, in plenty of time to make the March 13 JAGCT meeting highly productive for attendees.

Expected primary agenda items for the March 13 JAGCT meeting will include (but not be limited to) the following:

· Update on current Jaguar Conservation MOU, JAGCT signatory cooperating agencies, and acceptance of any new cooperators
· Review of cooperating agency staff commitments to JAGCT
· Discussion of the draft final AGFD-NMDGF Jaguar Conservation Strategy, including integration of companion jaguar conservation efforts in Mexico
· Discussion of pending or completed petitions, legal challenges, etc. pertaining to jaguars (e.g. critical habitat, recovery planning, etc.)
· Reconstitution of all JAGCT Committees and appointment of Chairs and Co-Chairs
· Updates on JAGCT sponsored monitoring
· Discussion of Homeland Security issues along the US-MX Border that are of interest to jaguar conservation efforts
· Other business

JAGCT meetings are open to the public. State, federal, tribal agency cooperators in the conservation project are represented at each meeting.

Additional Information

Information about JAGCT public meetings and other issues pertaining to jaguar conservation is disseminated electronically through a self-subscription newsletter, Endangered Species Updates. The newsletter self-subscription form is available at http://azgfd.gov/signup.

Information pertaining to jaguar conservation is also available at the Arizona Game and Fish Department website (http://azgfd.gov/w_c/es/jaguar_management.shtml).

The JAGCT email address is jaguar@azgfd.gov. Messages received will be read, but individual replies will not be sent.

:tj

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