ENDANGERED OCELOT: Texas is home to this endangered 
cat, and there are less than 100 of them left ... details on 
Passport to Texas.

This is Passport to Texas

Ocelots once roamed throughout Texas, Mexico, and into 
Arkansas and Louisiana. Jody Mays says today, only a 
few survive in the thick brush and shelters of the Lower 
Rio Grande Valley.

:14 -- As far as we know, there less than 100 ocelots left in the 
United States. The ocelot's range has disappeared, and now they 
only occur in the southern most tip of Texas, and that's the only 
place in the whole United States that they occur. 

Mays is a Wildlife Biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife 
Service at Laguna Atascosa Natural Wildlife Refuge. She 
explains reasons for the population decline.

:41 -- Usually with an endangered species, you have multiple 
impacts that they get hit with. For the ocelot, the biggest one 
was the habitat loss. Some estimates say that over 95% of the 
native habitat in Texas has been altered. A lot of the thick 
habitats have been cleared for agriculture, and for development, 
and for other purposes. Another associated impact with that is 
habitat fragmentation, and that's where, you say, have one large 
piece of thick habitat that gets cut up into smaller pieces that are 
farther and farther apart. Loss of genetic diversity is another big 
issue, and that's as a result of this habitat loss and 
fragmentation. 
 
That's our show for today ... with support from the Wildlife 
Restoration Program ... helping to fund the operations and 
management of more than 50 wildlife management areas 
in Texas.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife ... I'm Cecilia Nasti.







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