Proof that Core and Corridor Conservation Works: The Florida Panther

On June 20, 27, and July 4 of this year I offered an overview of the core and corridor conservation concept as it evolved from island studies decades ago.

The winter 2019 issue of The Nature Conservancy’s magazine has a great example of this in practice, featuring the revival of the Florida panther: The Panther’s Path. In case you are not a member of The Nature Conservancy and do not get their magazine, here’s a brief summary of the story:
A half century ago, the last of the Florida panthers, a subspecies of the puma, had been crowded into the most remote swamps of the Big Cypress region of southwest Florida. About 20 individuals remained, and genetic analysis indicated maybe only three breeding females. Inbreeding was also taking its toll, some of the males were damaged goods.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 recognized that this was a population in need of redemption, but at that time there was no organization, no plan, and no budget. It took more than a decade to get agencies and NGOs organized enough to actually begin doing something beyond meetings, letters, maps, and discussions, so let’s fast forward to the action.

To address the inbreeding problem, eight females were borrowed from Texas in 1995, outfitted with radio collars, and released to rear a few years’ worth of kittens in Big Cypress (they were later recaptured and returned to the wild in Texas). This was a substitute for the males who in their native state wandered widely and kept the south Florida population in genetic contact with the rest of the continent.

A South Florida panther using a wildlife underpass. (photo from TNC article)

With Miami to the east, and ocean to the south and west, the only direction to expand a corridor of useable habitat is northward. Assorted agencies plus The Nature Conservancy have been busy with a few land purchases plus good use of conservation easements to open a corridor for the panther’s northward migration. The Florida DOT has begun building wildlife underpasses on major roads along this route.

Breeding range map (taken from TNC article)

And this program has slowly become successful. By 2007 there were about 100 of these big cats in the wild, and today about 200. Their potential breeding range today is shown in orange outline on the map.

But sharing the landscape with the planet’s least trustworthy species is precarious. In 2018, alone thirty panthers were reported dead, 26 killed by vehicles.

Like most wildlife, panthers get confused by heavy traffic; especially when blinded by headlights. (photo taken from TNC article)

And the challenges continue to grow. The state is still a Sunbelt destination, gaining about 900 new residents per day. The state planning department sees a need for a new major toll highway running south from Orlando to Naples (see map), which puts it right through the region where there appears to be room for a panther corridor heading north.

This is a fairly typical example of the realities of core and corridor conservation, and it is proving successful. But it is not complete. Orlando is a large bottleneck in the future north-south Florida panther corridor, and will probably require a huge effort to get around it.

Here in eastern Iowa, our rivers and streams form the most natural and functional corridors, but not when crops go the edge of the riverbank. We need comprehensive planning and action to create a mix of ownership, parks, conservation easements, CRP, WRP, and other favorable management to provide continuity of corridors.