In Brazil, a refuge for pumas threatened by urban expansion

The five-year-old male was named Barreiro, after the neighborhood where he was found, trapped in a steel cable trap. The feline was rescued by the NGO, which runs a wildlife sanctuary in Jundiai, a city 90 km from Sao Paulo.

"Due to the advance of urbanization into its natural habitat, when the puma moves, it gets lost between roads, gated communities or other human interventions," Jorge Bellix, president of Mata Ciliar, which has already treated 32.000 animals in its nearly 30 years of existence, told AFP.

"If this continues, we will unfortunately see the extinction of several species in a few years," he warns.

Brazil has the greatest diversity of wild cats in the world, with nine recorded species. All are threatened with extinction due to human activity, particularly unbridled urban expansion.

A few dozen kilometers from Sao Paulo, the largest megalopolis in Latin America, pumas are seeing humans moving ever closer to their natural habitat, the Mata Atlantica (Atlantic Forest), the biome where Brazilian wildlife is most threatened.

They are thus exposed to the risk of being run over on the road, electrocuted, poisoned, caught in traps or targeted by poachers' bullets.

"Critical situation"

Along the highway leading to the refuge in Jundiai, housing developments and shopping centers are springing up like mushrooms, like gray spots amidst the emerald green of the forest.

In total, 25 pumas and 10 jaguars are currently being cared for at the Mata Ciliar NGO's refuge, which is as big as 40 football fields and also houses monkeys and maned wolves.

Jaguars are rare in the Mata Atlantica, but they are often victims of animal trafficking and are taken from the Amazon jungle (north) or the Pantanal wetlands (central-west) to be brought to the state of Sao Paulo (southeast), the richest in the country.

Sometimes called the "stone jungle," Sao Paulo is a megalopolis full of skyscrapers home to 12 million people, or 21 million if you count the entire metropolitan area.

But a few kilometers away, there are vast rural areas, with the dense forests of the Mata Atlantica and hills.

When humans invade the puma's territory, disrupting the food chain, the cat must move to survive. This is how Barreiro fell into a trap.

"We found him in terrible condition," said veterinarian Cristiana Harumi, who participated in the rescue.

At the shelter, she stitches up the large wound opened when the puma tried to escape from the trap.

"The situation is critical: Sao Paulo's animals are losing the war against urbanization," laments the veterinarian, who hopes that Barreiro will be able to return to his natural environment in three months.

Since the puma is at the top of the food chain, it is considered a "bio-indicator": its disappearance would be a worrying sign of the degree of environmental degradation.