An Arizona outdoorsman recently spotted a rare animal and even secured footage of it, according to KGUN9.
Jason Miller has been setting up trail cameras around the community of Vail for years, capturing videos of animals like bobcats, skunks, foxes, coatis, bears, mountain lions, ringtails, and bighorn sheep.
He had previously spotted a rare wild ocelot this way, but his latest sighting was of a brand new individual that had not been seen in the area before. This was remarkable, as fewer than 100 ocelots are estimated to live in the wild in the U.S.
"It's my last camera to check, and it was a nighttime video, and I thought it was a false trigger," recalled Miller, per KGUN9. "It was a 25 second video, and 12 seconds in, I see some eyes off to the right come on the screen. And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I got the ocelot,' and I thought it was Lil Jefe."
"So, you know, excited and happy about it. But driving home, I thought, I'm gonna check the spots, because I've never gotten him there before. It turned out to be a new one."
Trail cameras are important tools in monitoring populations of elusive and threatened wildlife, including any rehabilitation efforts. Human presence scares off most wildlife, making handheld photography more challenging and a less reliable data source.
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When armed with accurate information, it's possible to inform conservation measures and justify existing ones. For example, trail cameras at a Texas wildlife refuge identified 22 distinct ocelots within its territory, indicating a successful rebound. Another trail camera in Australia recorded the reappearance of the northern quoll.
Miller looked back to when he first started setting up trail cameras and how he's managed to maintain excitement for these kinds of sightings.
"Oh, it's incredible. I can remember back when I first started, I would get the leg of a deer, or a javelina and be over the moon," Miller said, per KGUN9. "It was terrible footage, but you know, to get that for the first time was amazing."
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