S. Texas rancher sets aside 1,300 acres for ocelot
chatnoir
headline:
S. Texas rancher sets aside 1,300 acres for ocelot
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN; Associated Press Writer
Published: 12/23/09 8:20 am | Updated: 12/23/09 10:00 am
Comments (0)
Recommend (0)RAYMONDVILLE, Texas – Few things would venture into the
dense thorny scrub favored by the endangered ocelot. But with little
of south Texas considered suitable habitat for the remaining 50 or
fewer rare cats, the ocelots remain vulnerable.
The Nature Conservancy hopes to give another 1,300 acres of that
forbidding thicket of mesquite, huisache and other shrubs to the
spotted cats with a conservation easement it bought from south Texas
rancher Frank Yturria on Tuesday.
Yturria, 86, spent much of his life fighting back such scrub on the
thousands of acres of open grasslands where his cattle graze, but
decades ago stopped clearing some of those areas when he realized
ocelots live there.
This week he and his wife, Mary, went a step further to protect ocelot
habitat, selling the easement on their San Francisco Ranch. The swath
of land, less than 15 miles inland from the Laguna Madre, straddles
Willacy and Kenedy counties. It is adjacent to three easements Yturria
already has made for the ocelot, and more than doubles the amount of
land he has set aside.
The San Francisco Ranch easements are part of one of only two
documented ocelot breeding grounds in the country. The other is at the
Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, about 25 miles to the south.
"I hope that 50 years from now ... those little cats will have a place
that is theirs," Yturria said Monday at the ranch. "The worst
destructive element this Earth has is man."
Ocelots are about twice the size of a house cat and also are found in
Central and South America. The conservancy says on its Web site that
it is the rarest cat in America, having been hunted down for its
distinctive yellow and black spotted fur. Loss of habitat and
collisions with automobiles also have been blamed for the declining
population ... (cont)