Panther, Panther

Regular readers know of my love for wild animals - here's a tale of the Florida Panther. Enjoy.

The New York Times
March 14, 2006
A Rare Predator Bounces Back (Now Get It Out of Here)
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

OCHOPEE, Fla. — In the weeks before Valentine's Day, a healthy Florida panther kept emerging from the dense, sloshy wilderness around Big Cypress National Preserve to kill things he shouldn't: chickens, ducks, a turkey, a pig and a house cat, all on residential property that his stealthy species normally shuns.

The hungry panther — nicknamed Don Juan by scientists who had radio-collared him years earlier and knew he had fathered some 30 kittens — kept coming back for more, despite efforts to deter him. So on Feb. 16, wildlife officials had dogs chase Don Juan up a tree, shot him with a tranquilizer gun and removed him from the wild. It was no light decision, as the number of Florida panthers, the only subspecies of puma east of the Mississippi, is estimated at fewer than 100.

Cars have already hit and killed five other panthers in 2006, including one pregnant with four kittens and another that was crossing a road just north of the Florida Keys, far from typical panther habitat. A sixth was apparently killed by another panther, an increasingly common fate as the territorial cat loses habitat to subdivisions, golf courses and the like.

A new federal report in January announced the obvious: that the Florida panther population must grow to survive — ideally, to three separate populations of at least 240 each — but that it is ever more desperate for space. The report, by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, rehashed the thorny old idea of moving some of the cats to Central Florida and eventually to other states where they once roamed, like Georgia and Arkansas.

But there are no firm plans, and with the panther population still endangered but healthier than it has been in decades, South Florida is facing an equally thorny new question: what to do when panthers get too comfortable on human turf?

The question is compounded by a scientific dispute: some researchers say Florida panthers no longer qualify as a separate subspecies, partly because many are descendants of a crossbreeding program with imported Texas pumas in the 1990's. If their classification were to change, they could lose their federal protection.

But whatever their status, they are making other species uncomfortable. After Don Juan attacked the domestic animals here, the National Park Service sent letters to about 500 residents of Ochopee and Copeland, tiny communities in the Everglades, stressing "the importance of securing livestock properly." They included tips like installing outside lighting ("will allow you to see if a panther is present"), and renderings of panther-proof pens. At a campground in Big Cypress National Preserve, a vast hodgepodge of cypress swamp, prairie, pinelands and hardwood hammocks — rangers scrawl warnings on a memo board when radio-collared panthers are detected nearby.

The federal government will soon go further, releasing a new plan for dealing with "panther-human interactions" and instructing people how to live among big cats. Stephen Williams, founder of the Florida Panther Society, an advocacy group, said Western states with large puma populations had adopted similar plans a long time ago.

Even before the exploits of Don Juan — who had a 620-square-mile range in the wild but is now living at Busch Gardens outside Tampa — the panthers of South Florida had encountered public relations problems.

In 2004, the Miccosukee Indian Tribe persuaded wildlife officials to relocate a young male panther that had been glimpsed several times near a sacred ceremonial site on tribal lands. The tawny cat was moved about 60 miles northwest, but it was killed within months by another panther, presumably in a turf battle.

The tribe complained again recently, this time about a female panther and two of her year-old cubs that it said were getting too close to residences, campgrounds and an education center on an isolated road in Big Cypress National Preserve. The tribe, which monitors some of the 33 or so collared panthers, wants the mother cat removed. Federal officials are considering doing so, despite protests from the National Wildlife Federation and even government biologists.

Darrell Land, the panther team leader for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said that unlike Don Juan, this cat had shown no signs of abnormal behavior and should not be moved from the dry and slightly elevated area, ideal panther habitat. Instead, he said, the center should install a fence so that deer could not stray into its yard and attract panthers.

"Her biggest sin is that people occasionally see her on that road or that, heaven forbid, she goes and chases a deer," Mr. Land said of the cat, known as Florida Panther 124. "I don't see that those behaviors have elevated to the point that I'd be concerned about human safety."

While California has experienced several mountain lion attacks in recent years, Mr. Land said he knew of only one documented case of a Florida panther's attacking humans, in the late 1800's. Deborah Jansen, a biologist at Big Cypress National Preserve, said California simply had far more people living in panther habitat.

Mr. Land said Florida panthers, which mostly feed on deer and wild boar, were curious enough to stop and perhaps stare if they saw people, but would flee if approached. He added that the radio-tracking program that has helped scientists better understand the cats now appeared to have a drawback: creating unnecessary public anxiety about them.

"It's one thing to know you live in panther country, but it's another thing to see a map showing a panther was 100 feet from your back door," he said. "Stuff like that has happened all along, but now we have the technology to show it. It gives people too much information, and we don't know how to deal with it yet."

Mr. Land and other government officials said they hoped the new federal plan for dealing with "panther-human interactions" and educating the public would avert conflicts like the one concerning Florida Panther 124. A draft of the plan sets protocols for sightings, encounters and attacks on pets, livestock and people.

A panther that stalked or showed other aggressive behavior toward people would immediately be removed from the wild. But with one that killed pets or livestock, or did not retreat when a human tried to scare it away, wildlife officials would first try "aversive conditioning": chasing it with dogs, hitting it with a slingshot or otherwise trying to deter it from returning to the area.

That plan, to be released soon for public comment, already has detractors. In letters to Big Cypress National Preserve, Billy Cypress, tribal chairman for the Miccosukee, said the tribe preferred a "three strikes and you're out" plan, under which panthers that lingered within 100 yards of a residence three times would unequivocally be relocated or removed from the wild.

David Shealy, who owns a campground in Ochopee and lost chickens, ducks and a turkey to Don Juan in February despite a fence he said he had installed to protect them, said there were already too many panthers.

"The Everglades has become a giant cage with limits and boundaries," he said, "and the amount of food available for these cats is just insufficient."

Mr. Shealy is among many landowners and developers who say the Florida panther is identical to pumas elsewhere in the country and so does not deserve species protection. Indeed, a 2000 study by Melanie Culver, a geneticist with the United States Geological Survey, found that panthers and other North American pumas shared enough genetics to be a single subspecies.

But others say that Florida panthers still have distinctive traits, like their nasal bone structure, and that the question needs much more debate. Even Dr. Culver said she would not advocate officially lumping the Florida panther with other cats.

"I certainly wouldn't push for the taxonomy to be formally changed because that would change their protected status," she said, "and that's the last thing I want to do."

The new federal report — the latest draft of a panther recovery plan last updated in 1995 — suggests keeping panthers far from urban areas by moving some of them into rural Central Florida.

But many scientists, including Mr. Land, are skeptical. They say that Central Florida does not have enough contiguous panther habitat, that the cats would have to cross more highways, and that much agricultural land would have to be turned into the dense forests that panthers prefer.

A better alternative, many scientists agree, is moving some Florida panthers to remote areas of Georgia, Arkansas or other states where they used to roam and where choice panther habitat still exists.

But as history and the recent tensions here suggest, getting the public to embrace what the report calls "large carnivore reintroduction" will not be easy. When Texas pumas were released in North Florida in 1988 and 1993, to gauge whether a permanent population of Florida panthers could be established there, local opposition was fierce and hunters shot some of the cats.

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service emphasizes that there is no schedule for moving panthers out of South Florida, to the frustration of many conservationists. "We were down there begging them to put time frames on it," said Mr. Williams of the Florida Panther Society, who was on the team that wrote the latest recovery plan. "The cat was listed as endangered in 1967 and we're still waiting, 39 years later."

In Arkansas, home to four of the nine recommended relocation sites, David Goad, deputy director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said panthers were unlikely to be welcome there.

"Before you can move a large predator into an area you've got to have a lot of support from the public," Mr. Goad said. "Their hands are going to be full getting that public support, and I would almost guess it's an insurmountable problem."

But what kind of reception panthers get elsewhere is a moot question until South Florida has a large and healthy enough population to dispatch them to other regions. Some scientists fear that will never happen if their habitat keeps shrinking.

Under pressure last year, the Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged that it had relied on incomplete data about the space panthers need. It looked only at their movements during the day, when they usually sleep. Critics said the faulty data had helped justify decisions to approve development in the marshes, prairies and pastures where the cats roam at night.

In its new report, the agency calls preserving panther habitat in South Florida its top priority. Yet construction has just begun on Ave Maria, a new town that will hold a Catholic university and up to 30,000 people, on 5,000 acres of panther habitat bordering Big Cypress National Preserve and the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge.

Since it is too late to save that land, Mr. Williams said, the focus should be on persuading its human inhabitants to accept panthers in their midst.

"North America's wonderful natural heritage without a predator?" he said. "It's doesn't make any sense. We need to learn how to live in the woods, instead of like we're in a glass capsule."
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