Once rare, Florida panthers are rebounding

A deeper gene pool
It was not until wildlife biologists introduced eight female Texas cougars in 1995 that the gene pool began to broaden and the numbers started creeping back up.

Even that small increase in population has heightened the threat to suburban back yards, since each male cat can range up to 200 miles.

At a recent town hall meeting in Collier County, state and federal officials gave residents safety tips, even though there has never been a documented attack on a human in Florida.

The tips included trimming scrub from property to remove food sources that attract deer, the panther’s favorite prey, and to deprive the big cats of places where they can hide and stalk. Among the other advice: Don’t let children play outside in known panther areas at twilight, when the cats are most likely to feed.

That wasn’t what everyone wanted to hear.

“I personally want humans to stay on top of the food chain,” said Barbara Jean Powell of the Everglades Coordinating Council, an umbrella group of sportsmen associations that strongly supports private property rights.

For some, ‘a dangerous animal’
“It’s an assault on rural America to say, ’Don’t let your kids outside at night,”’ Powell said. “It’s got no place being here. It’s a dangerous animal.”

Ryan’s close encounter with a wild animal took place last month in a hamlet inside Big Cypress National Preserve. Wildlife experts are not convinced she saw a Florida panther and say it may have been a bobcat. But the schoolteacher was shaken: “We don’t need them here. This animal does not need to be protected anymore.”

However, Elizabeth Fleming with Defenders of Wildlife said that people are the problem and that state and federal governments aren’t doing enough to protect panther habitat from urban sprawl, in part because of a lack of money to acquire land. Federal funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to drop by 20 percent in 2008.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” she said. “The Endangered Species Act wasn’t set up to stop development, but the panther has extremely large territorial requirements. If that area becomes suburbanized, it doesn’t take much to see that there won’t be any more panthers.”

Darrell Land, lead panther biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said that day is nearing fast.

“We’ve hit the slippery slope and we’re closing in on the bottom,” Land said. “We’re all getting frustrated with congestion and high cost of housing, but we’ve got to achieve a balance. We simply cannot afford to take over every square foot of Florida and put a house on it.”

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