Biologist Fired Over Macho B Affair

Fresh developments in the Macho B death mystery: The Arizona Game and Fish department has fired Thorton W. Smith, a field biologist, for lying to federal investigators about the circumstances of the last American jaguar's capture and eventual demise. At the time, Smith claimed that the jaguar had been snared accidentally in a trap set for mountain lions or bears. He recently confessed that the capture had been intentional, confirming a recent investigation by the Department of the Interior.

Smith didn't act alone: he claims consultant and fellow biologist Emil McCain told him to use jaguar scat to lure the animal to the trap. The pair cooked up a cover-up story after news broke of Macho B's death. McCain then treked back to the capture area and cleared all traces of scat so that the facts would line up with their fiction. At this time, it is not clear why they wanted to snare the jaguar.

"Yah. Yah. We came up with a story, and I just, it's been eating on me, and I just couldn't live with it," Smith told the department's internal investigators.

A quick rundown of the story so far. On February 18th, 2009, Macho B., believed to be the last jaguar in the United States, was found caught in a trap southwest of Tucson. Smith and McCain tranquilized him, slapped on a tracking collar, and let him go. After a week in the wild, the jaguar slowed down dramatically. Fearing for the animal's health, Game and Fish workers recaptured and choppered him to the Phoenix Zoo, where veterinarians diagnosed him with terminal kidney failure before putting him down.

That diagnosis, though, is contested, as is the question of whether Macho B's repeated capture helped deteriorate his health. Last year, a minor controversy flared up when a University of Arizona vet lab challenged that conclusion. Two other labs, at the University of California-Davis and the U.S. Geological Survey, confirmed it was kidney failure. These questions will never be conclusively settled, however, because the big cat was not given a full autopsy, thus heightening the intrigue of the whole affair. At 15 years old, Macho B was the oldest known wild jaguar.

In January, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which investigated the Macho B scandal, announced it moving toward a jaguar recovery plan. A silver lining to the unfortunate demise of our jaguar friend? Actually, no. Reintroducing jaguars probably isn't a good idea.

Photos credit: Arizona Game and Fish Department