Panama is home to wildlife such as Pumas and Jaguars, and being wildlife, they can be dangerous. Here is such a story by a local Panama farmer. With the moon as our only light, we travel several kilometers along a bumpy, uneven dirt road until we reach a neighbor’s house. We wanted to know how he was after the attack: his young horse, a two-year-old investment, was half-eaten by a puma. The light from his headlamp barely illuminates his sweaty, worry-streaked face. Raising a foal isn’t cheap: just bringing a mare to breed can cost 300 balboas, not including feed and care. A calf, meanwhile, can cost between 400 and 500 balboas.  In the last year, he and other neighbors have lost two horses and two calves in an area where life is already harsh. Recently, feline experts have told us about an inexplicable wave of feline predation. Each loss is a direct blow to a family’s livelihood.

In San José de Madroño—an hour and a river from Las Margaritas de Chepo, in eastern Panama—there are no veterinarians nearby, and most don’t have livestock insurance. The losses accumulate silently, and until recently, there wasn’t even a way to report them to the authorities.  As I listened to him, I was reminded of a different loss in my own family. It wasn’t an animal, but our entire crop: more than 500 balboas worth of materials and months of work, destroyed by a neighbor’s cows that wandered in for just a few hours when someone left the gate open. As farmers in Panama, we’re always at a disadvantage compared to ranchers: if someone else’s cattle destroy my crops, the law is on their side, and we bear the cost of the loss and the fences that must keep their animals out. 

Something similar happens with felines, although the “neighbor” is different. Here, it’s not the landowner next door, but the state, the region, even the entire nation, who claim jaguars and pumas as common heritage. If a feline enters my pasture and steals cattle, I can’t kill it either. The jaguar is protected by strict laws, such as Law 24 of 1995, which prohibits the hunting, capture, or killing of wildlife in Panama, with severe penalties for violators, including years of imprisonment. It’s me who must fence, modernize systems, and take better care of the livestock.  This mandate represents a true turning point. Previously, “preparing” land for livestock or agriculture included eliminating big cats.

Although there are no records of jaguars attacking people, and incidents with pumas are rare, we grew up fearing these “critters.” They were killed as much out of fear as to protect the animals. Today, however, the law demands the opposite: to learn to coexist with them and transform our practices so that predators and producers share the territory.  But adapting isn’t easy. Livestock in our communities graze in vast pastures, sometimes an hour’s ride away on horseback, and are only checked every couple of weeks. Change involves money, time, and breaking with customs rooted for generations.  In other regions of Panama, pioneers are already emerging, in collaboration with the NGO Yaguará and the Ministry of Environment.

They corral livestock at night; they also place bells on the animals, install lights with motion sensors, fence smaller pastures with electricity, monitor felines with cameras, and purchase livestock insurance.  Coexistence with jaguars and pumas cannot be sustained solely by laws that protect the predator. It all begins with a change of mentality: recognizing that the jaguar is a key part of the ecosystem that protects our watershed and, with it, our very lives. The State should not compensate us for every animal lost if we continue to raise it as if we weren’t on the edge of the forest. They are abundant in healthy forests, and they are also abundant when we hunt their prey in those forests. It is we who must modernize our practices. 

This requires creativity, trust, and, above all, real coordination between institutions, ranchers, and subsistence farmers—many of whom are already in debt to the bank—to design, finance, and monitor sustainable solutions. According to Yaguará’s Ricardo Moreno, a partnership is being arranged with MIDA, ISA, BDA, and COPEC so that they are trained to support affected farmers and can accompany the Ministry of Environment on its visits to affected communities with the goal of presenting a feasible adaptation path. 

Meanwhile, our community-based organization (CBO) AMIGOS DEL BOSQUE, together with the NGO KAMINANDO and biologist Ignacio Zea Monteza, is looking for ways to support our community in this transition period: an uncertain time between the unsustainable systems of today and the ones we need to build tomorrow, with all the barriers involved in moving from one model to the other, especially in the short term, when ranchers are afraid to see felines roaming their pastures and threatening their animals, and outsiders are talking to them about long-term solutions.

We bring sound traps, motion lights, and an interest in finding philanthropic funds to help small producers adapt their systems.  Ultimately, coexisting with big cats isn’t a productive challenge for a single farm or community: it’s a national choice. The jaguar doesn’t understand boundaries or deeds; its territory is the natural corridors that crisscross all of Panama and guarantee long-term environmental and community health. And if we want to protect it, we must also pave the way for our most vulnerable ranchers to make the transition with real support, not just demands.


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