NOGALES, AZ — For the first time in at least 50 years, a rare and endangered ocelot has been spotted in a region of southern Arizona.
The animal was recorded on trail camera video in June in the Coronado National Forest, in the Nogales area of southern Arizona.
Multiple agencies reviewed the footage and determined it was a new cat not previously seen in the state and that it was the first ocelot sighting in the Atascosa Highlands region in more than 50 years.
“This cat was observed in desert scrub and at lower elevation than most historical records of ocelots in Arizona,” Phoenix Zoo officials say.
“Finding evidence of a new ocelot in southern Arizona reinforces our commitment to collaborative efforts to conserve wildlife and their habitats in the region,” says Arizona Center for Nature Conservation and Phoenix Zoo President and CEO Bert Castro in a press release. “We’re eager to review additional camera data from this study to see what else we can learn about species of conservation concern in the borderlands and what they need for their continued survival.”
In the last year, one other ocelot was captured on video in the Huachuca Mountain range, which is more than 50 miles away from the Atascosa Highlands sighting.
Phoenix Zoo first deployed cameras in the Atascosa area last year to study wildlife and habitats in the “relatively understudied” area.
Volunteers and zoo staff will return to the area multiple times in the coming months to collect additional camera data to be studied.
Learn more about the sighting and Phoenix Zoo’s studies here.
