Men Face Charges After Touching Wild Jaguar Cub in Mountain Pine Ridge

A moment captured on video and shared across social media is now at the center of a criminal investigation, after a group of visitors got far closer to a wild jaguar cub than wildlife experts say they ever should have. The footage, recorded in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, shows individuals approaching a mother jaguar and her cub, with one man reaching out to pet the young animal while another suggested picking it up. What some may have viewed as a harmless wildlife encounter has sparked outrage among conservationists and prompted swift action from the Belize Forest Department, which says the group’s actions may have violated wildlife protection laws and endangered both the animals and themselves. As authorities move to identify and charge those involved, they are using the incident as a stark reminder that Belize’s wildlife is meant to be admired from a distance, not handled for social media moments. Today, we spoke with Forest Officer Victoria Chi.

 

Victoria Chi, Forest Officer

“We are planning to charge them under the Wildlife Protection Act under Section 3A and C. 3A is basically saying that you are not allowed to hunt any species that is in the schedule, in the schedule in that act. Jaguars or the five cats are listed in that schedule as animals that cannot be hunted. And when people say hunting, I always explain to them hunting does not necessarily have to be that you’re with a firearm out in the forest hunting. For us, hunting is to either, yes, to hunt, to take, to kill, to molest. And if you go to the definition of molest, it’s basically harassing or interfering with the animal that is within their natural habitat. So once you’re doing that, it is considered hunting within the, the law. So, um, it’s very clear that they should not have been doing that. So that’s 3A. 3C is then saying that if you hunt, you should not hunt any obvious immature wildlife. And in this case, we can all see that is a jaguar cub. And so it’s those two sections of the legislation. The only downfall when it comes to that is that that legislation was done in 1981. So the fine, I’ll be very honest, and the public might not like it, the fine for it is only five hundred dollars. So that’s the fine that they would be charged, since it will be for both of them, it’s one thousand dollars that they will be fined for. And that’s basically what the legislation calls for. We have revised the legislation. It has been approved by cabinet. And our new fines when that is sent back to us will be from thirty thousand and up.  But we’re not there yet.”

 

The Forest Department says it has contacted Immigration to help monitor the entry and exit records of the individuals involved in the jaguar cub incident as it does not have the authority to issue travel alerts itself.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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