When wildlife conservationist Russ McSpadden checked a trail camera in southern Arizona earlier this year, he didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary.
But then a sleek, spotted cat appeared on the screen — an ocelot, one of fewer than 100 left in the entire United States.
“I shouted with joy when I realized what I was seeing,” McSpadden said in a press release for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Capturing footage of this cat in the wild gives me hope for their survival.”
Ocelots once roamed widely across the Southwest, Mexico, and beyond. But in the U.S., their numbers plummeted due to hunting and shrinking habitat.
For years, only one ocelot was thought to live in Arizona — a male known as Lil’ Jefe, isolated from potential mates after the Arizona-Mexico border wall cut through his range.
“The wall has almost perfectly divided male ocelots in Arizona from female ocelots to the south,” explained Aletris Neils, director of Conservation CATalyst.
This new sighting changes everything. Not only does Lil’ Jefe have company at last, but researchers believe this newcomer has already traveled incredible distances.
After comparing his unique coat markings, biologist Dr. Carmina Gutiérrez González confirmed that the same ocelot had been recorded a month earlier on a different trail camera, more than 30 miles away. In that time, the wild cat crossed both a river and a highway.
The latest footage showed the ocelot wandering through the Sky Island mountain range, part of the ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation.
“Seeing the return of an ocelot to these ancestral lands reaffirms our sacred connection to this place and reminds us of our duty to protect these lands and the creatures that depend on them,” said Chairman Austin Nunez of the Nation’s San Xavier District.
For conservationists, the discovery is a rare spark of hope. The Center for Biological Diversity believes sightings like this can fuel stronger protections for ocelots and the fragile habitats they rely on.
With luck, this wandering wild cat won’t remain a mystery for long — and perhaps, one day, Arizona’s ocelots will thrive again.
