Jaguars mating in Brazil

This video says about itself:

Jaguar Mating In Brazil – BBC Earth

23 August 2017

Thought to be solitary big cats, this footage shows jaguars mating and staying together for several weeks.

Efforts to rein in agriculture activities in the Amazon have led to an 80 percent reduction in rainforest destruction between the early 2000s to 2015. Yet in this month’s Journal of Geographic Sciences Michigan State University (MSU) researchers show that farming and ranching have caused 6.6 times more destruction of natural vegetation in the nearby Tocantins State of the Cerrado in central Brazil, without a corresponding uprising of concern. “We are not saying reducing rainforest destruction in the Amazon shouldn’t get attention,” said Yue Dou, a research associate in MSU’s Centers for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). “But attention has to be paid in the major destruction of another area which also has significant biodiversity”: here.

The Cerrado once connected the Andes with the Atlantic Rainforest. A genetic and computational analysis of birds suggests that the Andean and Atlantic tropical forests, which are now almost a thousand kilometers apart, were connected via the Cerrado in the distant past: here.

The lesser-known Cerrado biome in Brazil is a hotspot of biodiversity, but it is being destroyed at an alarming rate by unsustainable agricultural activities. A study calls attention to this forgotten region and urges the international community to support measures for its protection: here.

To track secretive jaguars in the forested mountains of Belize, biologists turned to geology and feces analysis. Researchers discovered that jaguar scat reveals where the big cats were hunting in the mountains of Belize. It’s a powerful technique for wildlife conservation: here.