Sketching 4 Change - Why are jaguars critically endangered?

How we're all destroying the Amazon and killing its jaguars

Jaguars are sometimes confused with leopards, but the main difference between them is that the jaguar is the largest cat in the American continent, and thus also has a much more muscular build than the leopard. Likewise, their fur is slightly different: jaguars tend to have ring-like marks with spots inside, while leopards just have the ring-like marks:

Once present all the way from the south of the United States to Argentina and Chile, jaguars have been relegated by human activities to remote regions of the Amazon Rainforest and the Brazilian Pantanal, where they can still find the rivers, canals, swamps and other waterbodies they need to survive.

The IUCN has declared this feline as "nearly threatened" in some areas of South America, and as "critically endangered" in some others. Its existence "is essential to maintaining equilibrium in rainforest ecosystems. If it disappears, everything below it in the food chain is affected, with an overpopulation of rodents —the jaguar’s prey— that would eat more bugs and seeds, and decrease the regeneration of trees and other plants in the forest" (The Guardian).

Jaguars are threatened by many factors, the main one being the loss of habitat for agriculture and mining in the Amazon forest. The largest agriculture industries in the region are palm oil, coffee, cacao and bananas. The most prominent extraction activities are mining for gold and copper. To make things worse, a smaller (yet terribly detrimental) portion of forest destruction is caused by farmers for cattle grassing. In order to clear the land for all these industrial purposes, people burn vast portions of rainforest, to the point that, this June, "more than two thousand fire hotspots were registered in the Amazon, the highest number in the last thirteen years" (Greenpeace).

Under these circumstances, jaguars have no place to live, no pray to hunt; they either die amidst the vast acres of scorched earth, or get killed in human settlements where they try to find shelter and food. A few, very lucky ones get rescued by volunteering vets and conservationists.

(Source: The National News)

Raising awareness and making a difference

I believe that, in order to really take a turning point, one first has to become deeply aware of an issue. In order for this to happen to me, I decided to create a jaguar artwork that would not only remain fixated on paper, but on my soul too. Thus I did this charcoal illustration on 25% cotton paper.

 
  

I also decided to enlist 5 concrete actions that can help diminish the indirect effect my lifestyle and consumption patterns have on the Amazon Rainforest. I encourage you to try them too:

  1. Make sure the coffee, cacao and bananas you eat are responsibly cultivated.
  2. Do not buy food from brands that use industrialized palm oil from the Amazon territory, such as:
    1. Quaker
    2. Pepsico
    3. Doritos
    4. Burger King
    5. Nissin
    6. Walgreens / Boots
    7. Sara Lee
    8. Kraft Heinz
    9. Smart Ones (Source: Before the Flood, 2016)
  3. Reduce your meat consumption: join the Meatless Monday campaign and make sure to consume organic meat.
  4. Do not buy gold and copper objects, such as  jewellery, unless they're made of recycled gold and copper.
  5. Support the WWF in their efforts to save jaguars: you can make a donation or a purchase in their online shop as a gift or for yourself.

Afterword - How jaguars got a special place in my heart

This year, the Global Catholic Climate Movement's challenge for the Season of Creation consisted of 5 concrete actions:

@LaudatoSiGen

I was able to plant 5 apple trees from seed, and grow my own herbs organically at home (I'll talk about the trees and herbs in future posts 馃檴).  I also continued to make eco-bricks with litter and separate it appropriately. (If you wish to learn how to make eco-bricks, read my post about this easy and effective waste solution by clicking here. Also, another post about how to separate litter appropriately is to come soon!)

Tagging local officials in social media was not really for me, since I don't have Twitter (I never understood why I would like the idea of being limited in the number of characters I write... which is why I blog instead, I suppose). I was, however, very excited about the idea of making a climate change artwork piece. I first did some research on plastic arts as a means of protest and fight against climate change, and found that the Ecojesuit e-newsletter had been kind of the pioneer of this initiative amidst the Catholic advocacy for ecology.

Having been deeply touched by Pope Francis' exhortation letter to all humankind Querida Amazonia (2020), about the atrocious perish the Amazon forest is undergoing, I decided to do my illustration about that alarming issue. Living in North America (yes, Mexico is in North America) and thus thousands of miles away from the Amazon, I had never really realized the importance it has for the entire planet. When we hear and read that the Amazon is the planet's "lung", we tend to assume it produces a great amount of the oxygen we breath. This is actually false, since the main producers of oxygen are the oceans; but the Rainforest is crucial for our survival because it absorbs around 15% of the atmosphere's CO2 (Euronews).

I have always found Amazonian sloths and birds fascinating, so my first thought was to go for either option for my artwork. But then I considered the possibility of learning about a species that I am not especially drawn to. I must confess, since I'm not a cat person, felines have never really caught my eye. So my most prominent reference about jaguars comes from Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. He was in love with these animals and mentions them in various of his stories and poems. In them, he chose to embody the labyrinth and enigma of existence itself in the spotted and intricate fur of this animal.

And besides being a very symbolic and enigmatic creature for my favourite author, the jaguar is the king predator of the Rainforest, which makes its survival crucial as was explained above. Sadly, they have been almost completely eliminated from the American continent, and the Amazon was —until recently— one of it's remaining standing-grounds. All this, plus the fact that they're amongst the few felines that like swimming and being in the water (just like me), made me decide to do a jaguar illustration and get let it touch my —mostly— ignorant and stone-like heart.

馃挌馃尵

#Sketching4Change #DrawingLaudatoSi #SeasonofCreation

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