One endangered species for another: today, the Jaguar eats the turtle
In a seemingly dangerous loop, deforestation can be the only blame for conservationist’s quagmire off the cost of the Costa Rican national park.
In his recent paper, Diogo Verissimo, researcher with the Durrell Institute of Ecology and Conservation and Global Vision International recorded the number of marine turtles killed by Jaguars in the last five years as 676, an extraordinarily high figure.
Deforestation in the area has caused Jaguars to go further afield in search for food and undoubtedly, the slow, ponderous turtle residents of the island stand out as easy targets.
Joseph Tibias, a conservationist at Oxford University, said, “To stop it you need to protect large areas of forest because the Jaguar is a long range hunter”.
He added: “You need to bear in mind that people in that part of the world need to feed themselves and protect their livestock, so you cannot necessarily insist they clear no areas of forest. But the world has never seen deforestation on this scale before.”
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