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The Biology Department of the Honduran National Autonomous University (UNAH) has participated with several final-year Zoology students under the supervision of the director of the Natural History Museum (NHM) along with students of the Brus Laguna High School, the Organization for the Development of the Mosquita (MOPAWI), local natives, and the Brus Laguna municipality.

Visits to all the pine-savanna cattle ranches in the area have been carried out, interviewing local people, especially cattle ranchers and their foremen, about the number of Jaguar attacks they have experienced - where, when, and the number and age of animals attacked. Evidence of the attacks, such as skulls, skins and other indications of jaguar presence like footprints and remains of cattle that were attacked have also been collected.

Several skulls of both jaguars and cattle, as well as jaguar skins and footprints, have now been deposited in the NHM of the UNAH and are being studied and cataloged.

This study has been funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and similar studies are being carried out in Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

In Honduras, there are five wild felines; three with spots: the margay, the ocelot and the jaguar; two solid colored cats: the puma or mountain lion; and the jaguaroundi, that can be brown or black. The largest of all is the jaguar which at the present time is found almost exclusively in la Mosquitia.

Although sometimes jaguars kill cattle, the natives are used to the seasonal presence of jaguars, and, unless a jaguar has killed several cattle, do not normally hunt the feline.

Currently the popular belief in Brus Laguna is that if one jaguar that has been feeding on the cattle in a certain farm is eliminated then another jaguar will show up within one to three months at the same farm. Ten or fifteen years ago, and it still happens in some communities today, after a jaguar was killed near a cattle ranch, two to five years could go by before another jaguar came to the same farm to kill cattle.

Not all the jaguars or pumas become cattle killers. Big cats come to visit almost all the communities in la Mosquitia every day or week. It is so common to see their tracks, even around the houses, on the community trail, and in the sand along the edges of any rivers in the region that locals know that only on rare occasions does one of these big cats start attacking domestic animals like calves and pigs.

So when the natives see big cat tracks close by, they do not panic nor cause a scandal within the community. Everyone sees the big cat tracks almost daily when they go to work on their farms, or when they gather timber, hunt, or fish.

The natives of Brus Laguna have shared their points of view about this investigation and their consensus offers several explanations for the increased visibility of jaguars: either the populations of jaguars around the savanna are increasing; or the jaguars of the nuclear zone of the PRBR are coming down towards the savanna; or the populations of jaguar prey - like the white-tailed deer, peccaries, armadillos and tapirs - around and on the savanna are diminishing - possibly as a result of excess hunting by the natives, or extensive flooding during Hurricane Mitch that has forced the jaguars to turn to local cattle for food.

Over the course of this study, which is expected to continue for several years, we will be confirming several things. We will investigate whether or not the reported deaths of cattle are indeed from jaguar attacks. We will quantify the economic losses and analyze true cattle-raising practices. We will elaborate a jaguar and puma database that tracks the number of felines sacrificed by the natives of the PRBR for allegedly killing domestic animals. We will discern the strategy used by the jaguar in the pine savanna of Brus to get close the cattle, attack them and then hide.

We will also be involving the natives in the entire investigative process (especially the best hunters), as part of the local environmental education. As well as working together with cattle-owners, local authorities and the community to find management alternatives for the cattle on the pine savannas of Brus Laguna.