Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat said it has registered in Mexico the existence of more than 4,000 jaguars in five regions of the country, according to a national census taken to protect this endangered species.

The agency released that information Thursday in a communique from the 7th Congress on the Mexican Jaguar in the 21st Century: National Conservation Strategy, currently being held in the central city of Cuernavaca.

The secretariat’s director general for wildlife, Martin Vargas Prieto, said that Mexico has conservation centers for the feline in 18 states around the country, where the species is bred in captivity and later released into the wild.

“The jaguar is a predator that performs a basic ecological role because culling its prey’s population densities is one way to limit them,” the agency’s note said.