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(04/13/26)
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Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer
Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2026 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
"Jaguar Whisperer"
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The little boy had a neurodevelopmental disorder that so badly affected his flow of speech, he simply could not make his mouth wrap around the words. It was not simply a bad stutter, nor was he lacking intellectual intelligence. Human speech production is a complex process, involving cognitive planning, muscular actions and sound generation. But, whatever it was, Alan Rabinowitz didn’t have it. However, after school, he would go home to his room, into his bedroom closet with his pets: a mouse, a gerbil, a snake, and a turtle. And there, in the dark, protected from the chaotic world of verbalization, he spoke to his animals, clearly and succinctly. There was no stuttering; his phrasing and syntax were perfect.
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Sometimes, on Saturdays, his father would take him to the Bronx Zoo, where he would go straight to the cage of one of the big cats and press his face to the bars. There, from the silent passion of his heart, he would talk to the animals. He identified with them, as they, too, could not communicate. Alan made a promise that, one day, he would speak for the animals—to give voice to those who could not speak for themselves. A decade or so later, with hard work effectuating vast improvements in his speaking ability, he had received his Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology. Then, a chance meeting with Dr. George Schaller of the New York Zoological Society changed Alan’s life. He was given the opportunity to go to Belize and survey the country for jaguars. From that time forward, creating, protecting, and preserving the “jaguar corridor” would become his life’s work.
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Historically speaking, hundreds of thousands of jaguars once roamed the mountains and jungles of the New World, from southern Argentina, spanning the entire width of South America, through all of Central America, and on into the northernmost regions of Mexico. But, by 1983, the jaguar’s footprint had collapsed from the previous wide continental sweep, to a narrow, fractured spine, with Belize positioned in the very bottleneck of the only functioning land bridge left. Now, it would be up to one man—to his urgency, tenacity, and personal sense of stewardship over the land—to keep that connection, and prevent that fragile corridor from snapping in half.
Rabinowitz’s initial challenge was to locate the highest concentration of jaguars, hidden somewhere in the heaviest and virtually inaccessible jungles that lay to the west of the Southern Highway. Since public transportation was almost non-existent in
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that area, and hitchhiking could leave your thumb sticking-out for days before a vehicle passed by, Alan had purchased a little 100cc Honda motorcycle. Sometimes, one or two native Maya men would accompany him out of curiosity. They would show him old logging roads or hunting trails, leading him ever-deeper into the jungle until the bike could go no further. Proceeding on foot, now the single-track pathways they followed had been created by the passage of the very jaguars he sought. Alan developed a keen eye for tracks, scrapes, and resting beds, and an even keener nose for cat-scat.
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The pristine Cockscomb Basin, just south of the looming Cockscomb Range (including Victoria Peak) turned out to provide the perfect undisturbed “cradle of wildlife” and the vital link that kept the corridor intact. Through his resolute research, Rabinowitz discovered that this vast sweep of forest—about 128,000 acres, nearly 200 square miles of untouched basin—held one of the strongest and most secure jaguar populations left in the Americas, a place where fresh tracks, trails, and sign were so abundant that he could collar jaguars for years without ever running out of new individuals to follow. The area teemed with other wildlife as well: puma, ocelot, margay, jaguarundi, howler monkey, paca, tapir, armadillo, coatimundi, and tamandua.
Previously, the development of wildlife preserves around the globe had always been predicated on the premise of finding nearly-undisturbed wilderness areas, claiming them strictly for the animals, and then trying to resettle the humans elsewhere. But Alan’s idea was to accept “perturbation,” that is, to cooperate with the smattering of indigenous Mayan inhabitants, and a few citrus growers, in a reciprocal coordination of land usage.
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Alan’s life in the bush was harsh beyond the telling. Initially, he lived in a rude thatched dwelling, previously occupied by the last licensed timber operator in the area. There were hordes of gigantic cockroaches, and no fewer than 10 holes in the walls and roof. There was a small living area, a large cot in one rear-corner and, in the right rear-corner, a “toilet” consisting of a hole in the floor over which to squat. At night, Rabinowitz fought off clouds of mosquitoes. It was a choice between getting eaten alive, or risking early death by the chemical fumes of pyrethrum coils. Mosquitos not only carried malaria, and dengue fever, and sometimes delivered
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botfly eggs, directly into the bite. A single egg would grow into a huge subcutaneous lump containing a fat two-inch larvae, which had to fully mature within human flesh before eventually chewing and burrowing its way out.
Rabinowitz’s biggest obstacle became the mechanics of capture. He must anesthetize them, measure them, weigh them, check their teeth, assess their overall health, take blood samples, and then fit them with the all-important radio collars for tracking. Eventually, he would learn to distinguish individual jaguars, giving them Mayan names to maintain accurate documentation. But none of that could happen until he learned the best way to capture them, and designing trap-cages turned out to almost be his undoing. The big cats would either avoid the trap completely, catch and eat the small pig without tripping the gate, or be caught in the trap, utterly destroy the cage, and still escape. Worse yet, the jaguar would always end up wounding itself in the process. This was soul-crushing; Alan was there to save the jaguars, not injure them.
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He would go in a different direction. He would hire the best jaguar hunter in Belize. There was a man in Orange Walk with profound skill and experience, specially trained jaguar-hunting dogs, three or four assistant trackers, and stamina that was downright legendary.
However, there would no bullets, no trophies, and no spotted jaguar skin on some rich gringo’s wall. The dogs would tree the cats, and dart guns would anesthetize from a distance. Alan Rabinowitz needed Bader Hassan. |
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