November 11, 2002

Report: Florida Panther

Photo: © SWFMD

The Florida panther is one of the most endangered large mammals in the world. These rare cats are perilously close to extinction with only 60 to 80 adult animals remaining.  Less than 150 years ago, these magnificent animals were plentiful, living among the forests and dense cover of the Southeast, from Arkansas and Louisiana eastward across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and parts of South Carolina and Tennessee. Today, the only known remaining population of wild panthers is in South Florida.

The Florida panther continues to be a victim of habitat loss, environmental contaminants, motor vehicles collisions, prey scarcity, and even immune deficiencies. Wildlife managers in Florida have tested a variety of tactics to eliminate these problems, such as setting aside land for panther habitat and building passes under highways where panthers are most often killed. Biologists have also struggled to control the loss of genetic viability in the Florida panther, a potentially significant threat to its survival which results from its imperiled status.

Reduced to a handful of individuals that have been isolated from other cougars for a century or more, panthers have been inbreeding for decades. With the declining diversity of the subspecies' gene pool, problems such as infertility and heart abnormalities have increased. Such a genetic bottleneck occurs only in the most jeopardized and rarest of species and poses challenges for recovering populations.
Copyright  © 2002  National Wildlife Federation All rights reserved.

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