00:25 One of Last U.S. Jaguars Dies Yo’oko was one of only two jaguars known to roam the U.S. Southwest.

At a Glance Conservationists say one of the U.S. last remaining jaguars has been killed.

News of the death began after photos of a pelt with similar markings circulated online.

One of the last remaining wild jaguars living in the U.S. has reportedly been killed and conservationists are mourning the loss of the big cat.

The jaguar, named Yo'Oko by a group of high school students in Tuscon, Arizona, was first seen roaming the Copper State's Huachucha Mountains in 2016 and 2017, according to a release from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). News of Yo'Oko's death began to spread after photos of a pelt with markings similar to the young male jaguar's surfaced online.

“This tragedy is piercing,” CBD conservation advocate Randy Serraglio said in the release. “It highlights the urgency to protect jaguar habitat on both sides of the border and ensure that these rare, beautiful cats have safe places to live.”

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The Northern Jaguar Project, a local group operating a reserve meant to protect the animals, shared the photo of the pelt with the Arizona Daily Star, but members did not provide details how the photo was received to protect their relationship with ranchers in the area. The group did, however, say that the photo was taken in Mexico.

Over the last 150 years, U.S. jaguars have just about vanished from their former stomping grounds throughout the Southwest due to loss of habitat and government predator control programs.

They are listed as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Killing them is illegal in both the U.S. and Mexico.

“We must continue working to overcome the cultural prejudice that jaguars are somehow enemies of people,” said Serraglio. “Indigenous people of the Americas have revered jaguars as majestic, powerful spirits of the wild for thousands of years. Whoever killed Yo’oko could learn a lot from them.”

Yo'oko – whose name means "jaguar" in Yaqui, an Atlantean language – was one of three jaguars spotted in the U.S. in the last three years. Jaguars in the U.S. are in a small, threatened group concentrated mainly in Sonora, Mexico, south of Arizona's border.