While the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear court challenges to the act in the 2000s, “now that the border wall is front and center in the news, and it’s Trump’s pet project and Trump is under the microscope, I think the Supreme Court will be more motivated to look at the case,” Millis said. “It’s very unfair that the borderlands resources and communities are unable to count on the same protections that the rest of Americans take for granted.”

The jaguar does have legal protection in the U.S. in the form of the wildlife service’s formal designation of much of the Arizona-New Mexico border with the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua as critical habitat for the large mammal.

The jaguar is known to live in 19 countries including the U.S., but it is considered vulnerable to a wide range of threats including habitat destruction and illegal killing.

Seven jaguars have been documented in the U.S. since 1996 — five in Southern Arizona and two in southwestern New Mexico, including one near the Arizona border. Two were photographed in Southern Arizona late last year.

The Endangered Species Act forbids destruction or “adverse modification” of critical habitat. That typically is taken to mean damaging the land severely enough to destroy its usefulness to the endangered species.