TCH Comment: Certainly, northeast Texas has been the origin for many black panther reports over the years. Of these Texas cats, three are endangered in the United States: the jaguar, the ocelot, and the jaguarundi. A U.S. jaguar is rare indeed. And if the third camera-trap sighting is of a female jaguar, there's a chance the animals are mating. The mountain lion and the bobcat have a conservation status of Least Concern and are classified as nongame animals in Texas. The clearing of brushlands in the Rio Grande Valley threatens to destroy habitat in Texas. ... For several decades, there have been only occasional sightings of jaguars near the Mexico border. A jaguar was spotted November 16, 2016, in the Dos Cabezas Mountains of Arizona, 60 miles from the Mexican border, the farthest north one of these animals has been spotted in many decades. Jaguar spotting: A new wild cat may be roaming the United States. The Tucson-based Northern Jaguar Project released a photo to the Arizona Daily Star this week showing the pelt of a skinned jaguar. Firstly, there are more sightings of “Black Panthers” in Florida than any other state in the Country, which rules out the jaguar hypothesis completely. There is simply no other cat out there capable of reaching that size and weight. The Jaguar once roamed much farther than they do now but specimens have been verified in Arizona, New Mexico and even South Texas in recent years. Results of morphologic and genetic research failed to find evidence for subspecific differentiation.. The North American jaguar is a jaguar (Panthera onca) population in North America, from the southwestern United States to Central America. Jaguar. Legends of black cats run deeper than a little superstition in East Texas.Sightings of mysterious black panthers that scream like women in the pine jungles are not at all uncommon in the Pineywoods.Tales of the mysterious screaming beast have been raising hairs on the back of East Texans’ necks for the better part of nearly two centuries. This population has declined over decades. Nongame species have no protection. As late as the 19th century, the big cats frequently roamed from northern Argentina into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Texas Sightings: Over the last decade I have gathered several alleged jaguar sightings from Texas along the Rio Grande River region and into the Trans-Pecos. This is either a mountain lion or a jaguar. You must be from Texas. This population is also referred to as the "American jaguar" and "Central American jaguar". The group says the pelt’s markings match those of Yo’oko, a young male jaguar who had been spotted roaming the Huachuca Mountains southeast of Tucson, Arizona, in … Secondly, life long hunters who have killed bobcats, without a doubt know what they are. *Wild populations of jaguarundi are believed to be currently extirpated from Texas. These sightings are under investigation but unlike New Mexico and Arizona there are no official trail camera programs attempting to study any possible movements into Texas. Numerous sightings of this species are reported each year, but they are difficult to verify because of the similarity to wild house cats. Sombra, the jaguar named by students at Paulo Freire Freedom School, was first seen wandering into the Grand Canyon State from Mexico in Nov. … If Lanny is right, and this cat was around 100 lbs., our suspect list is very short. It is also known that there have been black bobcats.