When Panthera began working in Honduras 16 years ago, the 450-square-kilometer Jeanette Kawas National Park was the first place we set up camera traps. Founded in 1994, the park is a critical puzzle piece in the Jaguar Corridor. The park is home to a resident jaguar population, but some of the jaguar’s main prey species have either been extirpated from the park or are declining because of poaching. Panthera, the Instituto de Conservación Forestal (ICF), and our partners are on a mission to change that by reintroducing collared peccaries and protecting young green iguanas in the park.
Our team first collaborated with local partners such as PROLANSATE and the ICF to increase site security and reduce poaching. In 2015, we implemented SMART — the first time the technology was used in Honduras — and began patrols with community members and the Honduran military. The efforts were highly successful. With poaching better controlled in part of the park, the team turned its attention to rewilding: returning jaguar prey species to restore balance to the ecosystem.
Collared peccaries were once a dietary staple for carnivores here but disappeared from the park about 18 years ago. Bringing them back would help rebuild the ecosystem and ensure a stable prey base for jaguars.
Reintroductions are rarely glamorous — they involve extensive groundwork and paperwork. The team first sought community support, which was overwhelmingly positive, and identified suitable captive populations of collared peccaries to reintroduce into the wild. Scientists also used data from acoustic sensors that detect gunshot sounds — a proxy for poaching — to select the safest release area.
In 2021, the team transported the captive peccaries — some from as far as 14 hours away — to a large quarantine enclosure. The animals traveled in specially designed wooden crates, with staff carefully monitoring their temperature and keeping them cool with water sprays. No animals were lost during transport.
The peccaries spent about a year in quarantine. Because they had been raised in captivity, they were accustomed to humans — an unsafe trait for wild animals. During this period, the team worked to “rewild” them, helping the animals regain their natural wariness of people, a key behavior for survival.
The team then moved the peccaries to another pen at the chosen release site. This coastal area is surrounded by lagoons, mangrove forests, and a few small, legal coconut and palm oil farms. The peccaries were housed in the final release enclosure for 10 days to ensure they were healthy and ready to go, before being soft-released into the wild. With this method, the enclosure is left open and temporarily provisioned with food, so that the released peccaries had a safe haven to return to while they acclimated to the new surroundings. After some weeks, the food provisioning stopped. A group of 9 peccaries were soft released in 2022, and another 14 in 2023, for a total of 23 animals.
The team immediately started monitoring the peccaries using radio collars and remote cameras. Release came with its challenges, but the effort was all worth it, when a few months later, the team saw the results of their efforts on a camera trap photo: baby collared peccaries, the first born in the wild in the park in two decades. Today, these peccaries are about two years old. The population of collared peccaries in the park is thriving and continues to grow: today there are between 60 and 70 collared peccaries in the park.
The team is also working to bolster green iguana populations in Jeanette Kawas National Park, another important jaguar prey species. Green iguanas are native to and declining in Honduras. Inside the park, they’re being poached heavily. But Panthera and community partners are giving them a fighting chance through the Green Iguana Head Start Program. Created by a local community member, Mr. Ramiro Reyes and his daughter Patricia, Panthera joined their efforts in 2020.
Through the Green Iguana Head Start Program, the Reyes' family, Panthera´s staff and community volunteers protect iguana nests from predators in a small section of the park. After hatching, young iguanas are moved to an enclosure where volunteers, including school children, care for them for a year. Once the iguanas are bigger and stronger, they’re released back into the wild, in the same area the peccaries now call home. This head start increases their survival odds.
Between 2019-2025, the program released about 8,000 iguanas.
Through these efforts, Panthera and our partners are helping rewild Jeanette Kawas National Park — reviving prey species, restoring ecosystem balance, and securing a future where jaguars can truly thrive.
By joining our email list, you will receive the latest conservation updates, exciting stories from the field, our monthly newsletter, and more.
Join Our Email ListPanthera cares about your privacy. Read our Privacy Policy.
© Sebastian Kennerknecht
