Journey of the Jaguar

By Alan Rabinowitz, Ph.D., Panthera CEO

In addition to being a long-time friend and supporter of the Stuttering Foundation, Alan Rabinowitz, Ph.D., is the CEO of Panthera, the world's only organization devoted exclusively to the conservation of the world’s 40 wild cat species and their ecosystems.

One of the world’s leading jaguar experts, Alan first communed with jaguars as a young child in the Big Cat House at the Bronx Zoo. He is credited with identifying the need for a novel, range-wide approach to conserving the species. In 2006, Alan established the Jaguar Corridor Initiative, a sweeping effort to preserve the genetic integrity of the species from Mexico to Argentina. He has authored over one hundred scientific and popular articles and eight books. The following is Alan's personal journal entry at the beginning of his most recent expedition, the Journey of the Jaguar.

Welcome to the Journey of the Jaguar! In this pilot expedition on our three year adventure, we are traveling to the most important jaguar area in all of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula. We received news of potentially devastating deforestation taking place in the Yucatan, where two core jaguar populations (we call them Jaguar Conservation Units, or JCUs) thrive in heavily forested terrain. I’ve seen the end result of large scale deforestation elsewhere in the world and we need to see if we can stop that from happening in the Yucatan. The threat of isolation for even the best remaining forests with jaguars is our greatest concern. Forests are disappearing here at some of the fastest rates in the country–and the jaguars along with them.

Alan Rbinowitz Although Panthera has had an agreement with the Mexican government since 2015 to advance the Jaguar Corridor Initiative in the country, we’ve only just gotten started, having hired a new, dynamic Mexican coordinator, Diana Friedeberg. There is a lot to see and learn about Mexico’s system of protected areas and private lands because it’s a system unlike any other in Latin America. Proper protection and conservation in Mexico is challenging.

On this trip, we’ll meet with the directors of two large protected areas to assess the threat of isolation for the core jaguar populations living in each of their parks, and discuss how to maintain critical connections between them. We’ll visit with ranchers and community leaders to learn about what, if anything, they are doing to protect jaguars and other wildlife on their lands, and learn the extent of the conflict between jaguars and livestock.

Above all, we’ll be looking for jaguars. Our partners in the Yucatan, Dr. Mircea Hidalgo and his team of researchers at the University of Tabasco, have been working with local landowners and communally-owned farms, called ejidos, to conduct camera-trap studies on their lands. Understanding the distribution of jaguars in the region is the key to protecting them, and the essential first step in any science-based conservation plan.

The Stuttering Foundation is happy to help sponsor Panthera's Journey of the Jaguar that Board member Dr. Alan Rabinowitz will be taking for the next three years. Both organizations work to promote, protect, and respect the voices that too often go unheard. To follow Alan and the Panthera team's incredible journey, follow along online at www.journeyofthejaguar.org.

This article and journal entry are courtesy of Panthera.org.

From the Fall 2017 Newsletter

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor has been on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter for many years, but probably few people know all of the unique accomplishments of this former hockey great who was born on December 4, 1955, in Levack, Ontario.

Ken Venturi

As much of the nation watches the U.S. Open Golf Championship, it is impossible not to think about our late friend Ken Venturi. Ken overcame many challenges to win the Open at Congressional in 1964 and go on to become the voice of golf for more than three decades.

However, Ken faced no bigger obstacle than stuttering. Ken Venturi was a champion to those who stutter, going out of his way to share his personal experience when consulted by a colleague, friend, or child who stutters.

Byron Pitts

Byron Pitts has brought much attention to stuttering with his memoir, Step Out on Nothing: How Faith and Family Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges, released in September, 2009. The book not only details his speech difficulties, but also his illiteracy until age 12 and his unstable family life. Pitts overcame the odds to become the chief national correspondent with ABC News.

Kenyon Martin

Kenyon Martin, the basketball sensation who was named to the NBA’s All Star Team in 2004, joins other famous people who stutter in a new brochure. The brochure - which unfolds into a small poster - is available free of charge from The Stuttering Foundation.

The poster is intended to give children and adults who stutter inspiration as they grapple with their speech disorder.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.