Jaguars once roamed much of Arizona, even as far north as the Grand Canyon. Today, in spite of illegal hunting, habitat loss, a human population explosion and more than 370 miles of border wall, jaguars still wander into the state, but not much farther than just north of the US-Mexico border. The most recent sighting of a jaguar in Arizona, named “Cinco”, was in December 2025.
In this map I plotted the historic documented sightings of this magnificent cat, to better visualize the relationship between those locations with what are known as “sky islands.” To understand how and why jaguars travel into Arizona we first need to appreciate the importance of those sky islands, which is why I added the locator map and small infographic. All illustrations are my own.
To learn more, I highly recommend reading “Heart of the Jaguar: The Extraordinary Conservation Effort to Save the America’s Legendary Cat,” by James Campbell (Norton Publishing © 2025). It was this book that inspired this map. Available on Amazon.