For nearly two years, the CIWY staff raised her in Ambue Ari, a 1,000-hectare (2,500-acre) jungle surrounded by ranchland. The oasis of dense vegetation, muddy trails and shaded pools is home to wild species whose surrounding habitats are shrinking, and to rescues. Macaws, toucans and parrots call from above. Howler monkeys and capuchins roam free across the reserve. Jaguars, pumas, ocelots and margays, a species of small cat native to Mexico, Central and South America, live out their days in spacious jungle enclosures.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1000.jpg\")
The Ambue Ari reserve \u2013 loop<\/p>\n
But until 5 June, none of CIWY\u2019s jaguars had ever left their adopted home. In fact, before CIWY and partner organisations released Yaguara into the 1.5m-hectare Noel Kempff Mercado national park, no one in Bolivia had successfully rehabilitated a jaguar for release into the wild.<\/p>\n
\u201cYaguara has changed the history of jaguar conservation in this country,\u201d says Iv\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez, the biologist overseeing post-release monitoring.<\/p>\n
Yaguara\u2019s first step after her release in Noel Kempff Mercado national park. Photograph: Courtesy of CIWY<\/p>\n
The jaguar, categorised by the WWF as near-threatened<\/a> globally, is under particular pressure in Bolivia due to habitat loss, prey loss, poaching and human-wildlife conflict. \u201cIts status is vulnerable in Bolivia, but the discussion to downgrade that status to endangered is ongoing,\u201d says Dami\u00e1n Rumiz, wildlife researcher at the Noel Kempff Mercado Historic Museum in Santa Cruz de la Sierra.<\/p>\n Poachers kill an average of 61 jaguars<\/a> in Bolivia each year, the highest number globally. Traffickers sell the teeth and other body parts, primarily supplying<\/a> the Chinese market<\/a>. Meanwhile, wildfires, many intentionally ignited<\/a> to clear land for agriculture or cattle ranching, have significantly reduced the feline\u2019s territory. In 2024, Bolivia became the country with the second-highest level of deforestation<\/a> in the world, after only Brazil.<\/p>\n A team of vets taking care of an injured jaguar. Photograph: Courtesy of CIWY<\/p>\n The threats to jaguars also affect the wider ecosystems they inhabit. As apex predators, jaguars regulate prey populations<\/a>, helping to maintain ecological balance.<\/p>\n Despite their importance to biodiversity, rehabilitating captive jaguars for release into the wild is incredibly rare. Many jaguars in captivity can never be released. In CIWY\u2019s Ambue Ari reserve, for example, a male jaguar named Kusiy will live out his life in his enclosure. Rescued at three months old after being kept as a pet, the jaguar is too accustomed to people and never developed the skills needed to survive on its own.<\/p>\n Volunteers used to walk jaguars unable to return to the wild on a leash, a practice that drew criticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n CIWY says the organisation has changed its policies. Volunteers no longer walk jaguars, but they do walk other felines at the sanctuary, including pumas.<\/p>\n Yaguara is not the first captive jaguar released in the region. Successful rehabilitation programmes, such as Rewilding Argentina<\/a>\u2019s Iber\u00e1 wetlands jaguar project, have made headlines for bringing back the jaguar after it went extinct locally. But of the 18 countries in the Americas where jaguars live, only a handful have successfully released captive jaguars back into the wild.<\/p>\n Jaguars used to humans are less likely to survive because they will not avoid inhabited areas, and jaguars have been killed after being released<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the problem is that a jaguar attacked livestock, it will probably attack livestock again wherever it is released,\u201d says Rumiz.<\/p>\n Kusiy, a jaguar rescued from a private home by CIWY. Photograph: Anastasia Austin<\/p>\n Jaguars caught as cubs also often lack the wild instincts needed to hunt, and reintroduced jaguars can also spread diseases picked up in captivity.<\/p>\n But to the delight of CIWY staff, Yaguara, unlike any other jaguar ever treated in Ambue Ari, was an ideal candidate for rehabilitation. She was healthy, had maintained her surival instincts, stayed away from humans and had learned to hunt small prey.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the process was not easy.<\/p>\n As Bolivia had never released a jaguar before, CIWY, government institutions and conservation experts formed a committee to create rehabilitation protocols.<\/p>\n Ambue Ari staff built a 10,000-square metre enclosure with a pool for Yaguara to hone her instincts, at a cost of about $80,000 (\u00a360,000). It mimicked the conditions of the national park where Yagura was destined to be released. To monitor her behaviour, staff installed camera traps.<\/p>\n According to M\u00e1rquez, prey roamed into the enclosure on their own, giving her natural chances to hunt. Staff also supplemented her diet with roadkill.<\/p>\n \u201cHer behaviour was always in line with that of a wild jaguar,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Through the camera traps, the vets also noticed that Yaguara began showing signs of mating behaviour.<\/p>\n \u201cWe recorded more than 600 direct interactions with a wild male jaguar,\u201d says M\u00e1rquez.<\/p>\n Once deemed ready for release, staff put Yaguara in a crate, loaded her on to a small aeroplane and flew her to a military base near the Bolivian-Brazilian border. From there, the team transferred Yaguara by boat into the national park where they released her, fitted with a satellite monitoring collar.<\/p>\n The Ambue Ari reserve. Photograph: Anastasia Austin<\/p>\n In total, CIWY says it spent about $120,000 on the release.<\/p>\n Given the high costs, some conservationists question whether releasing jaguars into areas with already healthy populations, such as the Noel Kempff Mercado national park, is the best use of scarce resources. Many alternatives exist and can be much more affordable<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFunding more in situ conservation activities, improving training of park rangers, studying wild populations with camera traps \u2026 many of these measures could deliver better results and more knowledge than raising a jaguar and then releasing it to see if it survives,\u201d Rumiz says.<\/p>\n But CIWY argues that the release can add to jaguar genetic diversity, contribute to scientists\u2019 understanding of the species, and is \u201cthe fair, ethical, and morally right\u201d thing to do.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to give these animals, ripped from their habitat, a second chance,\u201d says M\u00e1rquez.<\/p>\n CIWY staff also point out that the future releases should be much cheaper. The enclosure, responsible for two-thirds of the price tag, is already built and can be reused in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve laid the groundwork for many future [releases],\u201d says M\u00e1rquez. \u201cBecause, sadly, this is likely to be the first of many.\u201d<\/p>\n Find more age of extinction coverage here<\/a>, and follow the biodiversity reporters Rebecca Ratcliffe<\/a>, Phoebe Weston<\/a>, and Patrick Greenfield<\/a> in the Guardian app for more nature coverage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tentative paw emerged from a steel cage on to the sandy riverbed deep in the Bolivian rainforest.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-528903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}