| Creating awareness on global & local scale | Winning strategy | |
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One of BJF's role for this ambitious project is to create awareness and activation on a Global scale but also on a Local scale by producing documentaries and informative films about the Corridor-project. Involvement of the local communities and companies is the key to making the Araguaia Corridor project a success.
Till date (September 2011) 99% of the people living in the prospected Corridor-region are are not aware yet and have no information about the plans of the Alliance. Outside Brazil this most ambitious conservation project is hardly known either. Therefore a strong PR campaign will need to be developed in 2012 and 2013. An important part of this PR campaign are documentaries and short online films. It has to be exciting with footage of animals living in the Corridor; animals the people living in the Corridor-Zone can relate to. The Star-Ambassadors will feature to spread their words to others, to create more Star-Ambassadors. It must also be educative, demonstrating how people can live sustainable and in harmony with nature, in the Corridor-zone. The documentary to promote the Corridor-project has clear strategies and partners. In order to generate media attention and attract and excite viewers worldwide, the documentary will also include unique footage of the black jaguar in its natural habitat. The black jaguar in its natural habitat has never been filmed, though is photographed by camera trap in the Corridor-Zone. The fact that the estimated number of ‘black jaguar survivors’ is just 600, leads to the difficulty. Summary of the 3 key reasons to produce the international documentary: 1) To generate awareness, media attention and activation on a global scale for the Corridor Project. 2) To generate media attention for the BJF sponsors who have ‘invested’ in the BJF and the Corridor-Alliance. 3) The international documentary will act as a ‘Flywheel’ to accelerate sponsor-funding and donors, to the benefit of the Corridor project.  There will be 2 phases of the international documentary: - Corridor Region phase - Black jaguar footage phase BJF has gathered a special ‘Team’ to succeed for this part of the documentary. In cooperation with JCF, a unique location with relative high density black jaguars has been allocated for filming, patience and high tech equipment are other elements of the 'winning strategy' The filming of both phases will start at the same time and will have a ‘final-product’ with or without the footage. 
Picture taken by sensor-camera trap in the wild.
Black Jaguar Footage Phase:
Onça preta' as the black jaguar is called in Brazil, is one of the very few animals left on earth who has never been filmed in the wild. She has many names, is heard from great distances and her stories are told from generation to generation. Local myths abound and some maintain that black jaguars are even bigger, more ferocious and more elusive than spotted jaguars. But there is no proof of this.
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Why can we succeed in obtaining footage of the black jaguar in the wild, while no one ever has?
 Because we know what it takes to succeed: The best experts in the field, ranging from most knowledgeable and experienced jaguar biologists, researchers, camera men. The duration of the project: estimated duration of the project will be 18 months, of which 14 months will be spent in the jungle to obtain footage of the black jaguars. No professional team has ever been patient enough for longer than 9 months to obtain footage of the more common spotted jaguar. The latest high-tech equipment available for wildlife filming and tracking. The right location: most of the filming will take place in Brazil, South-America. Based on detailed studies of the Jaguar Conservation Fund, 2 regions have been carefully selected based upon proof of high density of black jaguars in these areas. Other than commercial documentaries, this project has not been created to realize net-profits, allowing the project to be more 'patient' to reach its aim and fully utilizing the passion and expertise of its team members.Moreover the JCF biologists will obtain scientific knowledge during the tracking and filming phase, which contributes to their research to obtain more data about the least studied animal in the Americas. All passionate team members of the documentary will contribute their time and high tech equipment for free or at chartitable rates, for the full duration of the project. It might take the team over 18 months! To date jaguars left film crews empty handed! Even the more common spotted jaguar remains a myth to most film crew in the world. Many have tried and gave up. Unfortunately in most spotted jaguar documentaries, the viewer is tricked with semi-tame animals or animals in captivity that appear to 'roam free' in front of the camera.But even this way, no one has ever succeeded in filming the black jaguar. Not a big surprise, since only 6% of the jaguar population is black! Further more black jaguars prefer deep and thick forests such as the impassable Amazon rainforest which makes the already extremely elusive creature a needle in a haystack. The myths about jaguars go way back to the ancient Maya and Aztec civilizations, ruled by jaguar priests who dictated many aspects of people's lives. Maya’s identified the jaguar with gods and avatars (descendents of gods). For Aztec, the jaguar was not so much a protector, but a devourer of mankind. Local myths among the Yanomamo Indians of northwest Brazil tell of Curare Woman and Jaguar who parented the first men on earth. The myth remains and will always remain in the very few places left on earth where these mysterious jungle kings live their solitary lives, hardly ever revealing themselves to man and prey, only leaving their trails and leftovers of prey, if any at all. |
