(jaguar growling) ♪ RAY: The jaguar is a very iconic animal.

We have a sense of pride that this apex predator is still with us, but the jaguar is losing its home.

NARRATOR: Human expansion threatens jaguars across the Americas, perhaps no more critically than a six mile corridor in Belize that connects the country's largest jaguar habitats.

EMMA: We have this bottleneck of area left, so there is a race against time to make sure that the corridor remains.

(birds chirping) ♪ ♪ RAY: When I was a young kid, I would go in the forest with my father, sometimes my grandfather, and they would tell me stories about the jaguar.

The jaguar was revered by the ancient Mayas, so much as to put him as one of their prominent gods.

I'm a Maya person, so when I started to work with the jaguars, I felt that connection.

NARRATOR: Ray Cal manages Runaway Creek, a nature reserve, and a big cat hotspot.

(birds chirping) The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas.

A gifted hunter that keeps prey populations under control.

(jaguar growling) ♪ EMMA: Jaguars are the ones that are balancing everything.

There's so many habitats, so many different prey that they affect.

If we have too many herbivores, they might overeat certain plants that are necessary for the ecosystem.

(capybaras squealing) (water splashing) ♪ NARRATOR: Until the early 1900s, jaguars could be found across the Americas, from Argentina's grasslands to Arizona's Grand Canyon.

(cattle bellowing) But as more people moved in, jaguar numbers declined, and in some places, the cats disappeared completely.

EMMA: Their historic range has shrunk to about 50% of what it used to be.

We no longer have them in the US, and El Salvador.- Now, if you wanna see a jaguar, you come to Belize.

NARRATOR: Emma Sanchez works for Panthera, a nonprofit that pioneered jaguar conservation and established Belize as a stronghold for big cats.

EMMA: We do have a lot of habitat left where they can thrive, space to move, to find a mate.

There is a lot of prey, there's also a lot of water available.

(water bubbling) (engine rumbling) But even within Belize, the rate of deforestation increased in the last 10 years.

♪ NARRATOR: More than 35% of the country's land area is protected.

But it is separated into two large clusters in the north and south.

Their only connection is a narrow patchwork of forests, farms, and villages, known as the Maya Forest Corridor.

♪ EMMA: It is important for jaguars to move along this corridor, because that would ensure that their population does not get isolated, And with isolation, we can get into inbreeding.

NARRATOR: Potential mates need to cross this corridor to maintain genetic diversity and population health, but many won't survive the journey.

EMMA: The corridor has a lot of human activities.

There's agriculture, there's some villages and private land use.

Once jaguars start going into the human dominated landscape, that's where they have high risk of being killed.

(pigs grunting) ♪ NICASIO: I was raised in a family that do a lot of farming, and one of my passion is rearing pigs.

(hose spraying) Yes, we do have problems with jaguars.

We started to see jaguar footprints around pig pens.

(pig grunting and squealing) Good practices and good husbandry is the only way to secure pigs here in this area.

EMMA: A farmer is okay seeing jaguars around the farm, but that perception quickly is like a switch.

As soon as a jaguar attacks his- his livestock, he wants that jaguar dead.

(cow mooing) NARRATOR: Human-jaguar conflicts are on the rise, as the corridor rapidly loses its rainforest.

RAY: The core forest, 10 years ago it was 700 square kilometers, but now it is only 300.

♪ They say that these limestone hills make very good quality materials for road and construction.

♪ We have a mining company in this direction.

We have another mining company in this direction.

NARRATOR: Most of the corridor is unprotected, with one key exception: the private reserve that Ray manages.

Runaway Creek is only 6,000 acres, but it reaches out from the south into the heart of the corridor, like a lifeline for jaguars.

RAY: If ever Runaway Creek would be developed, there will be disconnection in the Maya Forest Corridor.

(birds chirping) EMMA: If we do not decrease the rate of the deforestation, we are gonna lose more and more populations of jaguars.

♪ NARRATOR: Conservationists, like Emma and Ray, race to preserve the pieces of the corridor the jaguars use the most.

But determining where cats go is easier said than done.

RAY: I've been here in the field for 22 years, and I've seen jaguar only five times.

I know they're around, I've seen a lot of fresh tracks, but to see them is a different story.

NARRATOR: Panthera's plan is to place hidden cameras throughout the corridor to identify the critical paths the cats take - Emma looks for signs that jaguars have been here: fresh droppings.

EMMA: It is very exciting to- to find a spot that has poop and even scrapes.

NARRATOR: Multiple scrapes on the ground or on trees are a sign that this is a high-traffic area.

EMMA: They are considered territorial.

So one individual marks, (jaguar scratching) and then if another one comes here, eventually, it becomes a cluster, and that's how they communicate.

Seeing that there's multiple scrapes here, definitely this will be a good spot to put a camera.

♪ NARRATOR: With luck, this trap will show Emma how many jaguars use this area.

EMMA: The camera traps are gonna be triggered as the animal goes crossing by.

(crickets chirping) ♪ (camera flashing) ♪ (camera flashing) Even though these cameras flash, they do not seem to interfere with the species behavior.

We do not stress the animal.

I think what excites me now is the video footage that we're now doing where we can get some of these animals in action.

You start learning about the population and start learning about what they're doing on their daily lives.

NARRATOR: These rare glimpses show that jaguars of every life stage use the same sections of the corridor.

EMMA: We saw a male jaguar walking around with a female.

(birds chirping) ♪ It's like, "Oh!

These ones are together!"

So we're gonna expect the cubs anytime soon.

(birds chirping) ♪ (jaguar cubs running) NARRATOR: One trap can only tell the story of a few individuals.

Emma needs data for the entire corridor.

(engine rumbling) ♪ EMMA: Our camera traps need to expand a very large area, as much as we can possibly handle.

So private landowners can definitely help us in jaguar conservation just by providing us permission to use their land.

NARRATOR: To cover more ground, she has recruited unlikely allies: farmers.

NICASIO: It is very important to protect jaguars so that we can have that balance in the ecosystem.

We are here to stay, and therefore we have to find ways in which we can coexist.

(pigs grunting) EMMA: There's a lot of communication and coordination with the landowners.

Because of that, we've tripled the amount of effort that we're doing when it comes to camera trapping.

NARRATOR: Panthera has now deployed more than 200 camera traps.

EMMA: The bigger the better.

The more samples we can get, and the more we can know about the cat, to pin it down on what we should be doing as a country.

♪ NARRATOR: Ray uses a different method to track the cats.

GPS collars provide long-term data on how jaguars move through the corridor.

But his team has to get close to the cats.

RAY: I was the one that diverted the cat's attention, so that my other colleague can get a very good shot with the- the tranquilizer.

(jaguar breathing) NARRATOR: They sedate the jaguar temporarily, so no one gets hurt.

Then affix a satellite transmitter.

Within minutes, the cat wakes up (camera flashing) and begins transmitting data.

(birds chirping) ♪ RAY: The GPS collars, they have a VHF signal that we track.

We want to see how jaguars are using the landscape and how far they range.

NARRATOR: Both the collars and cameras help pinpoint the jaguars' hidden pathways.

(grass rustling) ♪ Now, 30 organizations join with Panthera to purchase and preserve these high-priority areas.

They've already secured 30,000 new acres with plans to connect Runaway Creek to the other side of the corridor.

(engine rumbling) EMMA: I think one of the big successes for Panthera is the ground truthing that was done for the corridor, identifying where the best locations would be.

And now we can replicate this type of monitoring in other parts of the world.

NARRATOR: Emma and Ray's efforts are part of a larger plan.

Their counterparts work to assess and then protect corridors between key biodiversity areas across 17 other countries.

This could one day reconnect jaguar habitat from Mexico, through Belize, all the way to Argentina.

RAY: It is here that I saw my first jaguar, my first spider monkey, and my first tapir.

(tapir squealing) I am optimistic that the Maya Forest Corridor will continue to be viable for wildlife.

(jaguars grunting) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪