Carlton Ward and team will be debuting their National Geographic film Path of the Panther around Florida in the next few weeks. Follow the link and click on “See the film button to see times and locations. See it if you can. Carlton has done an admirable job. edit: I still haven't seen it but a friend just told me I was in some of the shots. Now I need to see it to see if they got my good side. Home - Path of the Panther
Thanks for mentioning this. We have discussed Carlton before. I'm going to try to talk the wife into going when it's at Tampa Theater at the end of the month
There is a similar story to be made for the spread of the cougar into the NE. I still dont understand why the panther doesn't thrive in the ocala national park / st johns river area as well as the swamps of south georgia NYT OpEd: Cougars Are Heading East. We Should Welcome Them. | Panthera
A bit misleading, they haven’t really moved East, wandering males can travel many hundreds of miles in search of a mate. This one made it 1500 miles. Mountain lion killed in Connecticut prowled east from S. Dakota That said, I do wish they would come back East, we would be better for it.
I’m not an expert but I believe the traffic corridors make it tough for pumas in the East. As mentioned they need LOTS of land to roam and hunt. Hard to do with interstates cutting across the landscape.
Then we should build critter crossings to accommodate them. It is their native range. If I build roads in panther area I have to build critter crossings. $800k for a 2 lane road
12areas are identified in this article where cougars could thrive. I suspect there are more if measures are implemented to avoid road crrossings. Opinion | Cougars Are Heading East. We Should Welcome Them.
You may already be familiar with the rest of Carlton Ward's work, but a lot of his work is dedicated on preserving a path through ranchlands for migration, going from Southwest Florida all the way up to around disney, having to continuous available path referred to as a wildlife corridor. He comes from a Florida ranching family and has done a book of photography on Florida's ranches
FWC looked at the possibility of establishing other panther populations in the SE US. Done a couple of times - most recently 1993-95. Using Texas cougars as surrogates, they were released from Osceola NF and ranged all over N FL and GA. One got as far north as ~20 miles north of Augusta Ga and as far west as AL line. Cougars did great but residents came unglued and opposed it mightily. Was frequently discussed in Tally. Politicians threatened budgets. I don’t foresee a state agency willingly walking into that shit storm again. Best bet to establish populations in FL outside of SW FL is to provide suitable connected habitat and allow them to do themselves which they have begun to do.
FL leads the country in wildlife underpasses. As SR-40 gets “improved” through Ocala NF the plan is to have a big bunch of them primarily for bears.
As @G8trGr8t said they are hideously expensive though especially for an existing road. And highway projects take a reeeeeeeeely long time to be completed. I reviewed letters from the early 1980s for the SR/40 project
ill be damned if they don't likely all contribute to save the manatee fund to make me drive idle speed forever to get out of a creek though. the NIMBYism of environmentalism is what I guess I was trying to point out. big cats are facing the same problem in California as the highways are killing the gene pool when populations are not mingling but you probably know that already. what happened to the cats that were released? were they rounded up or just hunted down?
fyi, turns out the cats don't mind walking in water. we have trail cams of them this summer where our crossings are proposed. USFWS wanted us to raise the existing ground at our crossings because area is wet in the summer. It is drier than everything else around so it seems to be the preferred corridor. Raising it to create more wetland impacts when it is the existing path and will be lower within 100' of the crossing made no sense. Took several months to convince them of that..smdh question, does panther fencing really work?
You seem to be a little aggressive in your posts. Florida does offer overpasses and underpasses for wildlife mentioned. But to assume that’s all it takes would seem a little simple. I’m not arguing against reintroducing pumas into the East… top to bottom.. as someone who has seen several in the wild I can say they are by far one of the most beautiful wild creatures I’ve seen. But I believe there are some LARGE hurdles to jump and it’s not an easy solution.
Panther fencing works IF 8ft+ high, long enough so it can’t be easily walked around, and funnels them to suitable crossing site. Yes, panthers don’t mind swimming or wading through water - there’d be very few in south FL otherwise.
Yes. The solution, if one exists is habitat, habitat, habitat. Large animals require large spaces and large predators especially require huge parcels of quality and connected habitat. In Florida that means huge sums of money even with less than fee-title protection like conservation easements. Is there political will to do that in the state? It was, for me, an aha moment when I realized that the last few panthers were found in the same habitat as the last few wild Seminoles and for the same reasons. The swamps of SW FL are not great habitat for panthers nor Indians but their members were safe from persecution and due to the remoteness were largely left alone
