‘Viva El Jefe!’ Beloved jaguar found in Mexico 7 years after vanishing from Arizona

The famous jaguar El Jefe, who disappeared from Arizona seven years ago, finally reappeared in Mexico, according to researchers.

The jaguar, whose name means “The Boss” in Spanish, was an Arizona resident for years — and one of the few residents of his kind, The Wildlands Network said in an Aug. 4 news release. El Jefe was first photographed in 2011 southeast of Tucson, Arizona, when he was about 2 years old.

Local middle schoolers named him for his “swaggering walk,” The Washington Post reported.

El Jefe roamed Arizona’s Santa Rita Mountains for years before vanishing from trail cameras in 2015, Wildlands Network said.

“Many feared [he] could have died,” Dr. Carmina Gutiérrez-González, Research Coordinator for the Northern Jaguar Project, said in the release.

But El Jefe was very much alive and roaming central Sonora, Mexico — about 120 miles south of his last Arizona sighting, The Center for Biological Diversity said in an Aug. 4 news release.

“Viva El Jefe!” the Conservation CATalyst posted on Facebook the same day.

PROFAUNA, a Mexican non-profit, photographed El Jefe in November 2021. Nighttime trail cameras captured a jaguar’s glowing eyes and upper body as it passed by a tree branch, photos released to the Associated Press show.

Researchers spent months analyzing the jaguar’s unique spot patterns and comparing these with other known jaguars before identifying it as El Jefe, Gutiérrez-González explained. “When our software showed a 100% match with El Jefe I was skeptical, but after making a detailed visual revision, skepticism gave way to surprise and then excitement.”

This means that El Jefe crossed the U.S.-Mexico border despite border walls and other infrastructure, the Associated Press reported.

The Sonora region of northern Mexico has a “small, vulnerable breeding population” of jaguars, The Center for Biological Diversity said. Jaguars in the southern U.S. move to and from this population. For this reason, movement corridors between Arizona and Sonora are important for protecting the species but often at odds with border security, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“I love knowing that a massive, beautiful cat like El Jefe traveled hundreds of miles, crossed the border at least twice, and went virtually undetected for the last seven years,” said Russ McSpadden, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

One of the most-studied jaguars in the U.S., El Jefe is unique for multiple reasons, according to the Associated Press:

• He’s one of the oldest jaguars recorded in Sonora at 12 years old;

• He’s one of the few jaguars known to have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border;

• He’s believed to have traveled the furthest distance.

Jaguars are an endangered species, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Historically, the species roamed Arizona, California, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas. After being hunted nearly to extinction in the 1900s, most jaguars in the U.S. are in Arizona, according to The Washington Post.

“El Jefe has once again shown us that it isn’t too late to restore these magnificent, endangered cats to the U.S.,” said Dr. Aletris Neils, the executive director of Conservation CATalyst.

Still, many researchers question whether El Jefe will be able to cross the border and return to Arizona, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

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