Western Mexico is a heavily human-dominated landscape. Dispersed towns, a wide net of roads, and a large unmanaged livestock population dominate the jaguar and puma ranges. The jaguar and puma are both classified as Near Threatened by The World Conservation Union (IUCN) due to habitat destruction and fragmentation, hunting, cub capture, and conflict with livestock.
Due to these species' status in the wild, Denver Zoo helps fund this important conservation project. The main goals of this project were to establish the current distribution of jaguars and pumas in Western Mexico, identify the main factors limiting their distribution, determine the species’ preferred habitats and better understand the interactions between the species. Researchers used tracks, prints, and trails left behind to help determine current habitat ranges. Factors such prey availability, ruggedness of terrain, and human activity were also used to establish habitat ranges.
 Results from the study showed the big cats are still present in most of the area but their populations are highly fragmented and widely dispersed. They appeared to be highly adaptable to various habitats, as they were observed in secondary forests, grasslands, coffee plantations, abandoned plantations, and thorn dry forest. The main factors shown to be currently limiting jaguar and puma distribution are food availability, human pressure, and the fragmentation of habitat ranges. It was also found that jaguar and puma have similar home ranges and in a 100 square kilometer range there is a density of 7.8 adult jaguars and 2.5 pumas.
There is still a chance to protect habitat for jaguars, but new paved roads to tourism on the coast of western Mexico increase the risk of the jaguar disappearing. Researchers have suggested to authorities to establish a protected area for jaguars
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