There's a lot of talk in the West these days about the stockman's long-time nemesis. Whether you refer to them as cougar, mountain lion, puma, catamount, or panther, they're all the same species: Felis concolor. The big cat is making headlines not for preying upon cattle, but people.

Last January, two mountain bikers in Southern California were mauled, one fatally. They are the latest unfortunate victims as human encroachment into mountain lion habitat takes its tragic and perhaps inevitable toll. Other attacks on humans have occurred in recent years in Montana, Colorado, and other parts of California.

Missing from the media blitz, however, is any mention of another feline predator in the West that is crossing paths more frequently with Homo sapiens: the jaguar. Contrary to popular belief, the mountain lion's larger cousin is not exclusively a jungle animal. In fact, the adaptable and stealthy jaguar has long had a home north of the border, extending within the last century onto the Colorado Plateau. Since 1900, scores of jaguars have been seen in Arizona and New Mexico, most often by sport-hunters and stockmen who promptly killed them. Documented sightings have been made as far north as the Grand Canyon and near Winslow in Arizona, and within the Gila Wilderness of south-central New Mexico. During the 1800s, jaguars roamed southern California and possibly parts of Colorado and Louisiana. Stephen Houston found jaguars "in abundance" throughout the Rio Grande Valley of Texas during the 1840s. There have been no documented sightings reported in Utah, though fossil evidence places them as far north as Idaho and Washington during prehistoric times.

Fortunately, jaguar attacks on humans are rare, with none reported in the modern era north of Central America. But like all large carnivores, some jaguars will occasionally prey on livestock if the opportunity arises, which explains the cat's virtually extirpation from the Southwest by the 1950s. With a government-decreed bounty on its head, the jaguar was shot on sight. Back in 1972, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged the jaguar's endangered status worldwide but inexplicably forgot to place the animal on the list of U.S. endangered species.

The situation began to change in 1996, however, when Arizona rancher Warner Glenn and his trained lion-tracking hounds cornered a big male jaguar in the Peloncillo range of New Mexico's bootheel. Since then at least four confirmed sightings, all 30 or fewer miles north of Arizona's border with Mexico, have been made of jaguars or their tracks.

The excitement of wildlife enthusiasts at the return of this charismatic beast is tempered, however, by an intense squabble over how state and federal authorities should handle the jaguar. Conservationists, some of whom have sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over this issue, want to lay out the welcome mat for jaguars by designating critical habitat and implementing a recovery plan. They point out that the cat may be fleeing Sonora, where a remnant population about 130 miles south of the border is being hunted (illegally) by backcountry ranchers. At least seven jaguars have been killed in Sonora since 1999 and less than 100 may be left. Once their gone, experts agree, wild jaguars will disappear permanently from the American West.

It appears that all jaguars encountered in the U.S. since 1996 have been males, probably transients seeking new territory. Some activists are hopeful that a breeding population may eventually establish itself in the rugged "sky island" ranges south of Tucson and west of El Paso. The sticking point has been the reluctance of area ranchers and other interested parties to promote habitat protection for an animal that many still believe poses a threat to their livestock. Jaguars have similar depredation habits as mountain lions, which continue to be shot by local ranchers. While some cattle-growers are intrigued by the presence of a few jaguars and will tolerate them as an exotic species, others cling to the old notion that any wild cat is a varmint. A few ranchers support a middle way, through participation with environmentalists, scientists, and bureaucrats in the quasi-official Jaguar Conservation Team, which meets regularly in New Mexico and Arizona to develop protection strategies.

According to New Mexico-based Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued Fish and Wildlife over jaguar management, it's unlikely that jaguars will flourish in the Southwest without extra help. Reintroduction is unlikely, given the scarcity of jaguars in northern Mexico and the difficulty in capturing them. Transplanted jungle cats would probably be unable to adapt to an arid climate and a prey base dominated by deer, javelina, and coati. Therefore, the animal's last best hope may be designation of critical habit as a kind of de facto sanctuary.

After millennia in the Southwest, time may be running out for the jaguar. Besides the dwindling breeding population in Sonora, things are getting tougher for all wildlife along la frontera. The U.S. Border Patrol is cracking down on an ever-greater number of undocumented Latin Americans crossing illegally from Mexico. The agency estimates that the Arizona-Sonora frontier is penetrated each year by hundreds of thousands of "illegals" as well as drug smugglers, many of whom unwittingly hike through prime jaguar habitat on their way to a presumed better life in El Norte.

The images of undocumented entrants often show up on the 30 motion-triggered camera traps set up to monitor jaguars near the border.

This disturbance is compounded by the invasive strategies the Border Patrol uses to secure the U.S.-Mexico boundary: frequent land and air inspections, bright lights, high walls, and barbed-wire fencing. In recent years, self-appointed vigilantes have joined the enforcement effort, trying to stem the tide of unsanctioned (and, to their minds, unwanted) immigration.

Now comes word of the latest potential deterrent to jaguar survival in the area. Last July, the Tucson Electric Power Company announced the proposed construction of a major high-voltage power line from Tucson south into Mexico. As outlined, the project would extend directly through an area near Nogales where a (possibly resident) jaguar has been observed three times by professional trackers since 2001.

"Within the last year, the border has become a very difficult place to work," conceded Jack Childs, the Arizona land surveyor who videotaped a jaguar in the Boboquíívari Mountains eight years ago. Childs, who monitors some of the remote cameras set up to photograph these wayward cats, told members of the Jaguar Conservation Team in August that he now packs a gun while on patrol. "If we're going to save the jaguar, we've got to act fast, and we're going to need help."

Richard Mahler is a free-lance writer who is writing a book about jaguars.