Once rare, Florida panthers are rebounding

updated 7:45 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2006

FLORIDA PANTHER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Fla. - Schoolteacher Theresa Ryan sensed an eerie presence behind her as she sat at a picnic table at her boyfriend’s rural home. Then she heard the breathing.

“I turned around and there was a panther 15 feet away. We were face to face,” she said. “It had no place to go except at me or by me.”

She flailed her arms and screamed to scare the cat. “It just sauntered away. No hurry. It was never afraid,” she said. “It was very freaky.”

For decades, such encounters with Florida panthers were extraordinarily rare, like the endangered animals themselves. But in recent years, panthers have rebounded from the brink of extinction to about 100 on the southwestern edge of the Everglades, prompting officials to warn residents to be aware of the cats and to keep their children close at dusk and dawn.

The big cats have since killed emus from a zoo, and goats and dogs from rural back yards. Documented panther attacks on livestock jumped from two in 2004 to six so far this year, and 10 panthers have been killed on highways this year alone.

Habitat surrounded
But biologists fear the increased panther encounters may be short-lived as the cats’ remaining habitat — 2.5 million acres in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park and a few strands of wild state land — becomes surrounded by some of the fastest-growing areas in the nation.

Mark Lotz / AP As urban sprawl creeps further into nature, human-panther encounters are becoming more common.

“The way we’re building, we’re going to push the panthers out,” said biologist Larry Richardson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “My big concern is the panther will become a zoo relic.”

He added: “If we build out even half the potential of what the state says we can, forget about the panthers.”

Florida panthers, which can weigh up to 155 pounds, are one of several subspecies of cougar in the United States and the last type still roaming east of the Mississippi. Thousands of these panthers once ranged throughout the Southeast.

By the 1950s, the panther had been hunted to near extinction, leading to their eventual protection, beginning in the 1970s, under the federal Endangered Species Act. But continued loss of habitat caused its numbers to dwindle to about 30 as recently as the mid-’90s. Those that remained showed signs of inbreeding and disease.

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