Unlike many domestic cats, jaguars don’t avoid water. They have adapted to living in wet environments, and can be found swimming in lakes, rivers and wetlands. They are confident swimmers, known to cross large rivers.
Deforestation rates are high in Latin America, both for logging and to clear space for cattle ranching. This results in many new threats to jaguars, from the loss of their home to isolating their populations, making breeding harder. Less habitat also means jaguars’ prey is reduced - over a quarter of their range is thought to have depleted numbers of wild prey. This leads them to hunt livestock and be killed by people. They’re also vulnerable to poaching, despite this being illegal. Though demand for their skins has declined since the mid-1970s, jaguar paws, teeth and other parts are still sought after, both locally and internationally for traditional medicine and ornaments.