Panthers Shy But Still Roaming

By Kait­lyn Carroll

The pan­thers in Flori­da are so few and far between that even the park rangers and locals often nev­er see one.  “You have to spend a life­time here to catch a glimpse,” said Patrick Boyce, a ranger at Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve.  “They are very much ghost cats.”

With pro­ject­ed num­bers of any­where from 100 to 160 adult cats in the state, the Flori­da pan­ther is con­sid­ered endan­gered.  The Puma con­col­or coryi was one of the first species added to the U.S. Endan­gered Species List in 1973.

Until the mid-1970s there was a wide­spread belief that the pan­thers had gone extinct.  Even into the 90s, “Their num­bers had hit a plateau.  Twen­ty to 30 adults.  That’s it,” Boyce said.

In a des­per­ate attempt to boost cat num­bers, eight Texas cougars, a genet­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar species to the Flori­da pan­ther, were brought into the state to mate with res­i­dent male pan­thers in 1995.

Deb­o­rah Jansen, the leader of the Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve pan­ther cap­ture team, indi­cat­ed that the mea­sure was suc­cess­ful.  Six of the eight cougars mat­ed with pan­thers and pro­duced lit­ters.  “They were here for two years, then were all cap­tured and removed,” Boyce said.  “It seems that the genet­ic ‘shot in the arm’ real­ly improved the over­all genet­ic health of the Flori­da pan­ther.”  Help from the cougars brought the pan­thers’ num­bers up to what they are today.

The most impor­tant ques­tion at the time was whether or not this hybrid breed­ing would help to save the orig­i­nal species of Flori­da cats.  “The thought is…if they suc­cess­ful­ly breed with the pan­thers, won’t that make them pan­thers any­more?  The divide became: do we pro­tect the pan­ther in Flori­da, or do we pro­tect the Flori­da pan­ther?” Boyce said.  “The idea was to pro­tect some­thing that his­tor­i­cal­ly would have been panther-like…their ranges would have over­lapped in his­tor­i­cal times.”

Even with the suc­cess of the cougar exper­i­ment, both Boyce and Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve spokesman Bob DeGross expressed doubt that the pan­thers would recov­er to healthy num­bers any­time soon.  “I don’t imag­ine that will ever hap­pen in my life­time,” Boyce said.

Before the cougars were brought in, inbreed­ing was a crip­pling prob­lem for the pan­thers.  A lack of genet­ic diver­si­ty was caus­ing health prob­lems for off­spring, accord­ing to Boyce.  Many kit­tens “were being born with holes in their hearts, weren’t liv­ing past the age of one.”  There were “males with unde­scend­ed tes­ti­cles,” he said.  “It was believed there was cer­tain mor­pho­log­i­cal traits of the Flori­da pan­ther, such as a kinked tail and a cowlick, but it’s the belief now that that was due to inbreeding.”

Anoth­er cur­rent and more promi­nent prob­lem for the Flori­da pan­ther is a con­stant loss of habi­tat.  Male pan­thers, espe­cial­ly, need large areas to roam and are very ter­ri­to­r­i­al.  “That’s actu­al­ly the num­ber one cause of death; every­one thinks it’s car acci­dents.  Here in Flori­da that’s num­ber two.  The big thing in Flori­da is space,” Boyce said.  “Naples is one of the fastest-grow­ing cities in the U.S.  The squeeze for space in Flori­da will be very troubling.”

Male pan­thers may trav­el up to 20 miles a day, and need 200 square miles of habi­tat.  “Cypress, Ever­glades, OK these areas are pro­tect­ed, but north of here and all of the areas south of Lake Okee­chobee, that’s on the fast track to be devel­oped.  Flori­da is about to become the third most pop­u­lat­ed state in the U.S…the ques­tion is how is this land going to be best uti­lized to main­tain the species?” Boyce said.

“The long-term ben­e­fit for the pan­thers and a lot of wildlife in the state of Flori­da depends on part­ner­ships between gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies and large pri­vate landown­ers to try to find a way to pre­vent con­ver­sion of those nat­ur­al areas to devel­oped areas,” said DeGross.

There are vast open spaces in the cen­tral Ever­glades.  How­ev­er, Lin­da Fri­ar, a spokes­woman for Ever­glades Nation­al Park said humans still make an impact. “Even though we have a lot of open areas, there’s a lot of devel­op­ment and road­ways that inter­rupt that so they’re killed in a vari­ety of ways, either by road impacts with vehi­cles or more rur­al res­i­dents who find them threat­en­ing,” said Fri­ar. Peo­ple still shoot and kill pan­thers on occa­sion, even though it is against the law and results in a heavy fine.

As of April 14, so far this year there have been 12 pan­thers found dead in the state of Flori­da.  “Sev­en of those 12 cats were killed by vehi­cles, and the oth­ers were all iden­ti­fied as unknown,” DeGross said.  “One of those was in the preserve.”

While they tend to stay out of sight in Big Cypress, they still make their pres­ence known.  “They’re using this area for sure, but real­ly don’t want to be around peo­ple what­so­ev­er.  They’re pret­ty cau­tious,” Boyce said.  In the pre­serve, the pan­thers in the park are mon­i­tored with radio col­lars.  Each col­lar is “good for about two or three years and you can hear it from about two miles away.  Var­i­ous planes will fly over, gen­er­al­ly about three times a week, and they’re lis­ten­ing because each of those col­lars has its own unique fre­quen­cy,” he said.

Each Feb­ru­ary, the pan­ther cap­ture team goes out to repair and replace the radio col­lars on the cats in the park.  “We usu­al­ly catch four new pan­thers each year and rec­ol­lar four oth­ers that have col­lars with bat­ter­ies that are fail­ing,” Jansen said.  The “cap­ture sea­son” only takes place once a year, dur­ing the dry sea­son, to ensure that sedat­ed pan­thers do not acci­den­tal­ly walk into deep water and drown.  A mix of male and female adult pan­thers are col­lared to mon­i­tor both pop­u­la­tion groups.

The Flori­da pan­ther is the state mam­mal.  Many schools and orga­ni­za­tions use the pan­ther as their mas­cot.  Because of the wide­spread famil­iar­i­ty with this ani­mal, most res­i­dents around Big Cypress and pan­ther habi­tat know that these ani­mals are at risk.  Boyce, whose job as a ranger is to edu­cate sixth graders about the envi­ron­ment they live in, believes that the youngest gen­er­a­tion is well informed.

“Often­times I ask the students…who has seen a pan­ther.  And there’s usu­al­ly one or two kids who raise their hand,” he said.  “They’re famil­iar with the Flori­da pan­ther, they know it is endangered…on the whole I’d say the vast major­i­ty of the kids, I think because they live so close to so many charis­mat­ic wildlife down here, it is some­thing they do gen­er­al­ly care about.”

How­ev­er, there is a small part of the pop­u­la­tion in Flori­da who do not see the pan­thers as crea­tures worth sav­ing.  “There is a belief among some people…that some­one was killed by a pan­ther,” Boyce said.  “There’s no his­tor­i­cal evi­dence that any­one has ever been attacked by a pan­ther in Florida…not only killed, but even attacked.”  Because of this fear, some peo­ple are afraid that resur­gence in pan­ther num­bers could pose a prob­lem for residents.

And this feel­ing seems to be the stan­dard in oth­er parts of the coun­try, where oth­er pan­ther and big cat species can be vio­lent.  “You go to oth­er parts of the coun­try, espe­cial­ly with cougars, there’s a very dif­fer­ent feel­ing, which is these are destruc­tive ani­mals that should be wiped out,” Boyce said.

“There is a reluc­tance to just move pan­thers to oth­er areas or their his­toric range because it is such a large preda­tor,” Jansen said.  “The most impor­tant aspect of pan­ther recov­ery today is to give them more habi­tat so their num­bers can increase.”

The only way for the pan­ther to be delist­ed as an endan­gered species is for three sep­a­rate pop­u­la­tions of 240 mature indi­vid­u­als to sus­tain over 14 years, accord­ing to Boyce.  “We don’t even have one pop­u­la­tion,” he said.  “It’s not so much a mat­ter of biol­o­gy, it’s a mat­ter of pub­lic opinion.”

“Pro­tect­ing wildlife, it’s all about values.”