Jaguar Is Latest Endangered Species

A federal judge has granted new protections to the tawny, black-spotted jaguar, the largest wild cat in the Western Hemisphere.

U.S. District Judge Roger Strand of Phoenix ruled March 19 in favor of a lawsuit brought by the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson and ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the jaguar as an endangered species in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas within 120 days.

Jaguars, 9 feet long from their nose to the tip of their tail and weighing up to 600 pounds, roamed the southern Coast Ranges between San Francisco and Monterey, Calif., until at least 1826.

The last known jaguar in California was killed near Palm Springs in 1860. In Texas, the last jaguar was seen in the 1940s, and in New Mexico in 1937.

Today the only jaguars - outside zoos - live in southern Arizona.