Pan­thers cling to sur­vival in Big Cypress

By Carmine Colangelo

Cred­it: Con­nie Bransilver

Majes­tic, pow­er­ful, icon­ic, elu­sive and endan­gered; all of these words can be used to describe the Flori­da pan­ther, but endan­gered is the word that mat­ters most.

The Flori­da pan­ther, which is the state’s ani­mal, lives in the swamps and forests of South­ern Flori­da and much of that habi­tat has been destroyed over the years due to exten­sive urban­iza­tion. As its land was deplet­ed, so was the species. At one point their pop­u­la­tion dwin­dled to about 30.

More recent­ly how­ev­er the pop­u­la­tions have been increasing.

“We’re opti­mistic in the fact that the pan­ther pop­u­la­tion has increased strong­ly from about 30 cats in the 1990’s to about 120 to 160 cats now,” said Bob DeGross, the chief of inter­pre­ta­tion at Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve. “The chal­lenge we have is that there is a car­ry­ing capac­i­ty. We’re opti­mistic that we can reach the car­ry­ing capacity
for the amount of pub­lic land that exists in South Florida.”

But DeGross says the next chal­lenge may not be the car­ry­ing capac­i­ty, the amount of land that can han­dle the big cats, but a social capac­i­ty. There is a large loom­ing fear of pan­ther attacks, which have caused many peo­ple not to want more pan­thers around. Accord­ing to DeGross this fear large­ly stems from the stig­ma of the wide­ly pub­li­cized moun­tain lion attacks on peo­ple in California.

There has been no report of a Flori­da pan­ther killing a human, however.

Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve has also been work­ing with the Flori­da Wildlife Com­mis­sion to mon­i­tor the pan­thers with track­ing col­lars. The num­ber of col­lared pan­thers has climbed to 211 after the most recent track­ing sea­son, which end­ed in Feb­ru­ary of this year. Although this num­ber is above the esti­mat­ed num­ber of liv­ing pan­thers, it shows how many have been col­lared since the project began in the late 1970s and ear­ly 80s. Since that time, col­lared pan­thers have died and agen­cies have began track­ing new cats, which explains the dis­crep­an­cy accord­ing to DeGross. The sea­sons for col­lar­ing cats lasts for about six months and in the last sea­son nine pan­thers were collared.

A male pan­ther requires rough­ly 200 square miles of land to roam and hunt. The female requires about 80 square miles in order to sus­tain their lifestyle. Almost 95 per­cent of the panther’s nat­ur­al habi­tat in Flori­da has been destroyed since the mid-1800s when Florida’s obses­sion was con­struc­tion and land development.

Tree islands such as this one in Big Cypress pro­vide ide­al habi­tat for pan­thers — Pho­to by Caitie Parmelee

The mix­ing of peo­ple and pan­thers in what was for­mer­ly the panther’s prop­er­ty has not gone well since the late 1800s when farm­ers believed the ani­mals were killing live­stock. Pan­ther hunt­ing became encour­aged behav­ior once they had a $5 boun­ty placed on their heads. More recent­ly auto­mo­biles have also been a large con­trib­u­tor to pan­ther deaths since the roads and high­ways inter­sect the panther’s habi­tat. Between 1995 and 2009 there were 112 pan­thers killed by vehicles.

Actions are being tak­en in hopes that the pan­ther will con­tin­ue to grow and sur­vive in Flori­da. The first step came when the fed­er­al Endan­gered Species Act of 1973 was passed and the pan­ther was among the first ani­mals on the list of pro­tect­ed endan­gered species.

In order to help lim­it the amount of pan­ther deaths by vehi­cle, fenc­ing has been installed along major high­ways the tra­verse the pan­ther habi­tat. The fenc­ing has cre­at­ed an under­pass for wildlife to cross high­ways safe­ly and keep them away from vehicles.

One of the main places where pan­thers are being pro­tect­ed in Flori­da is the Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve. Found­ed in 1974, Big Cypress is a 720,000 acre pre­serve locat­ed in South Flori­da and is a pri­ma­ry home to the panthers.
One of the main efforts to restore the pop­u­la­tion in the park was the intro­duc­tion of cougars from Texas to repop­u­late the pan­thers. Cougars were flown in, suc­cess­ful­ly mat­ed, and then moved back to Texas. The off­spring are still con­sid­ered to be Flori­da Panthers.

“It real­ly was the genet­ic shot in the arm that the pop­u­la­tion need­ed,” said Eleanor Hodak, a ranger at Big Cypress. “Slow­ly and steadi­ly the pop­u­la­tion is rising.”

Not only were the cougars impor­tant in bol­ster­ing the pan­ther pop­u­la­tion, but they added much need­ed genet­ic diver­si­ty. Pan­thers have strug­gled with genet­ic defects before the intro­duc­tion of cougars. Pan­thers would suf­fer defects due to inbreed­ing from a lack of panthers.

Efforts to relo­cate pan­thers in Alaba­ma, Geor­gia and oth­er parts of Flori­da, which was part of their range, have been less suc­cess­ful. This relo­ca­tion was protest­ed because res­i­dents in the area did not want a major preda­tor rein­tro­duced into the area. The stig­ma of ani­mal attacks and pan­thers attack­ing live­stock and pets still looms in the public’s mind.

With all that is being done to pro­tect the pan­thers, DeGross believes that the key in the creature’s sur­vival is held by gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies. “In order to increase the size of the pop­u­la­tion the state and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment needs to look at cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing wildlife cor­ri­dors of the state,” said DeGross. “The only way it is going to sur­vive is if more land is set aside.”