CHAD GILLIS, and BEN BRASCH

The News-Press

The Florida panther is at a conservation crossroads.

Heralded as one of the most endangered mammals in the world, the big cat and the protections surrounding it are being targeted on various fronts just as the population is rebounding and possibly ready for the second stage of recovery.

Land owners continue to push development into panther habitat, the two main agencies charged with protecting them have shown no enthusiasm for moving them north of the Caloosahatchee River and a record number are being killed by vehicles. And there's a growing call among some in Florida to be able to hunt them.

"We want a hunting season,” says Immokalee cattle rancher Jack Johnson as he drives a Navy blue pickup along State Road 29 through panther territory. “We’ve had enough of it.” There were too many bears before the bear hunt was approved, he says. "Now there are panthers everywhere.”

A group of nine land owners, including a Florida wildlife commissioner, is pushing for a permit to build on massive swaths of land adjacent to the Florida Panther Wildlife Refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve, where the heart of the breeding population lives. Called an incidental take permit, it acknowledges up front that panthers and other endangered or threatened species would be hurt by the development.

Female panther found north of Caloosahatchee; first time since 1973

If approved, the permit in the Immokalee area would allow the developers to side-step the Endangered Species Act through an exemption, critics say. Record numbers of panthers are being hit on highways, and adding more roads in panther habitat will equate to more panther road kills, biologists say.

The panther population is growing at a time when habitat is being lost. More roads plus more panthers will lead to more deaths. FWC documented 42 panther deaths this year (through Dec. 15), with 34 of those deaths attributed to road kills.

Betty Osceola, a panther clan member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indian of Florida, said the only reason to lower animal protections is to make way for more development.

"What is the purpose of whoever wants the animal protections removed," Osceola said. "What is their reasoning behind it? They need to look at why people don’t want that animal protected. What is the end result that they are looking for?"

The move to develop in panther territory comes after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released a draft policy paper last year that caused a furor. It said, with no backing material, that panther populations here are "straining and currently exceed the tolerance of landowners, residents and recreationists" in the area.

The draft policy paper, developed in part by Aliese "Liesa" Priddy, an FWC commissioner, also said establishing panthers north of the Caloosahatchee was not feasible and that the population had reached its "carrying capacity" here, implying the public's tolerance for the number of panthers had reached its limit. Those references were dropped in the final paper approved in August 2015, but critics worried the paper was based on and fed on an anti-panther mentality of ranchers and other landowners.

"It was a condemnation of the Florida panther," said Jackie Lopez, with the Center for Biological Diversity. "You’d think it was a sinister bad guy in a movie. They’re really not the villains she likes to paint them out to be. She’s not only starting the fire, she’s fanning the flames."

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Some are even attacking the animal's status as a protected species. Critics say there’s nothing special about this cat: it’s just like all the other mountain lion, puma and cougar iterations found west of the Mississippi.

Further, several female Texas cougars were brought here to breed with panthers to increase genetic diversity, which was causing panther numbers to plummet even further.

State changes panther paper, again

If that’s the case – if the panther is a genetic copy of these other big cats – the Florida panther may not qualify for the Endangered Species List because mountain lions are one of the most widespread mammals in the Western hemisphere, some argue.

Money, time and mismanagement have led to a panther population of 500 or more, ranchers — including Priddy — have said at public meetings. FWC biologists say there are 100 to 180 panthers living in South Florida.

"If people knew how many gazillions of dollars we've spent, all to preserve a cat that doesn't exist," Johnson said.

Who's in charge?

Critics say protection for panthers isn't likely to come from the state commission charged with safeguarding them. For example, commissioners, not biologists, came up with the unpopular 2015 bear hunt, according to testimony given by FWC's top bear biologist.

Some say the problem is the board's makeup: It's an agency governed by seven business people appointed by the governor. The commissioners include a Gulf Power executive, two road contractors and an executive from A. Duda & Sons.

“The FWC is an appointed body of hunters and land developers,” said Susan Hargreaves, founder of Animal Hero Kids, a 34-year-old nonprofit. “They’re not wildlife experts or even wildlife advocates. And just because you own a lot of land does not mean that you know about wildlife.”

Priddy and FWC director Nick Wiley wrote the panther policy paper, which said that people are fed up with panthers and that the state would no longer cooperate with federal officials in its recovery north of Lake Okeechobee. Panther biologists were not consulted beforehand.

Priddy is chipping away at important protections, some environmentalists said.

“She is the leading proponent of changing this panther rule, and she would gain financially from being able to develop her remaining property and selling it,” said environmental attorney Chuck O’Neal said. “When you think about their land, the panther, the bear hunt and development, you can begin to see the big picture.”

Those protections limit development in what’s left of the historic Everglades. Get rid of the panther protections, some say, and urban sprawl will stretch from coast to coast and south to Florida Bay.

A former banker, Priddy gave a presentation at Florida Gulf Coast University earlier this year. Listed on the day's agenda as an FWC commissioner, her talk was titled: "Private Landowner: The Next Endangered Species."

Panther deaths approaching record numbers

She said she can look out for Florida's wildlife and also be a voice for ranchers and other landowners in rural Florida.

Gov. Rick Scott, who appoints commissioners, said he has confidence in FWC commissioners.

"All of them care about our state," Scott said. "They’re all involved. Some fish. Some hunt. (And) Our panther population has been doing better, and the bear population is doing better. And the fisheries are too."

Fed up with panthers

In a small brush-filled habitat at The Naples Zoo, a tawny predator paces along a fence as a handler standing outside feeds bits of meat to it through the links. Uno, a young adult male panther, cannot be rereleased to the wild, a zoo official explains to a crowd of about 30 gathered at the exhibit earlier this year. Uno was shot in the face and backside nearly two years ago. He is now blind and unable to hunt or fully protect himself.

No one knows why Uno was shot, but his shooting proves a willingness to shoot endangered animals, zoo officials said. And his shooter has never been caught.

The habitat provides water, toys, and even seclusion among the trees and brush, but it's not the 200 square miles a typical male panther would roam and defend in the wild.

According to Johnson and others, panthers like Uno are already being targeted. Rick Dantzler, executive director of the federal government's Farm Service Agency for Florida, said the farmers he represents are steaming mad.

“Unless we can find a way to make the (panther depredation) program work, I’m worried that some of these panthers are going to start taking a .270 bullet behind the ear. And that’s not good for the panthers or the ranchers.

That’s especially a bad idea for ranchers because it’s a federal offense to kill an endangered animal.

Kevin Godsea, who oversees the Florida National Panther Wildlife Refuge adjacent to Priddy's ranch, said federal protections will remain in place and that a hunt will not happen anytime soon, regardless of any decisions made by FWC commissioners.

The panther paper also put much of the recovery work on the federal government while at the same time criticizing the agency.

Godsea read FWC's panther paper, and said: "In general, I don’t think it was meant with malice but how it was presented, presented the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife) service in a negative light."

Priddy said removing or lessening panther protections was never part of her goal. She and other landowners and ranchers living south of Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River have been waiting for decades for the federal government to move forward with its panther management plan.

Matriarch panther contributed to population rebound

It's time to either introduce panthers to other areas of the Southeastern United States, as the federal panther recovery plan calls for, or give the cat a designation that protects its current range and status in Florida while also removing the requirements to move the cats north and grow populations there.

Realism should be part of endangered species management, she said.

"The current management plan is probably never going to be achievable, so why are we working with a plan that can never be achieved," Priddy argued. "Think about how big South Florida is. There’s a lot of public land, Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve plus the private lands that are great panther habitat. Where else in Florida are you going to get that type of property that is contiguous? I don’t know of any other area like that in Florida. It’s hard to find it in another state."

Top-down science

The first listed benefit of the FWC's mission states: "Scientific data drives management decisions for fish and wildlife populations and their habitats."

But critics say there was little science behind last year’s panther paper.

Email exchanges show Priddy and Wiley did not include the state panther biology team while working on the panther policy paper, even though its top scientist, Darrell Land, helped write the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Florida Panther Recovery Plan – the document that spells out how, when and if the species will be removed from the endangered species list.

“I don’t remember the exact date,” Land said when asked when he first saw the panther paper. “It was prior to the June meeting, about a month or so. But no, we weren’t involved with whoever typed up the first letter.”

Priddy said in a recent interview that most government policies work from the top down. Biologists come into the equation later.

The panther policy paper "was trying to recognize that we have limited resources, that we’ve done a great job of recovery south of the river and we want to make sure we are devoting the majority of our resources to keep what we have in good shape," she said.

"I’m hoping it will emphasize the need to make some movement," Priddy said. "Either say you’re going to go with the plan you have, and tell us how you’re going to do it, or (admit) things have changed, and we need to recognize that. So what’s plan B?"

Fellow FWC Commissioner Ron Bergeron and Priddy gave dueling presentations last year, Bergeron using his personal research and videos to say panthers are not a danger to humans while Priddy used YouTube videos and photos from other ranchers to show they are.

Feasibility, Priddy and others argue, should be a part of the Endangered Species Act. If the goal is impossible, why start the journey?

"I’m just trying to be realistic," Priddy said during the commission meeting. "If you have a recovery goal of three populations of 240 and you don’t have places for three populations of 240, what are you going to do?"

Bergeron countered with his own series of video clips and personal accounts.

“I would think if we’re going over all these statistics we should have our panther team here,” Bergeron said during the discussion. “And I’ve had multiple conversations on their beliefs of the population and I’ve got no indication from our panther team that we have a population greater than the environment can handle. To make assumptions on all of this is kind of concerning to me and is a major issue.”

Sometimes nature takes care of what mankind is reluctant to do. Neither the federal government nor state government attempted to move panthers north of the Caloosahatchee. Male panthers have moved north in the past, but found no females there with which to breed.

In early November, The News-Press reported that biologists now have proof a female has crossed the river and is living north of it.

This year is the second consecutive year of record panther deaths: 34 killed by vehicles and 42 overall through Dec. 12. Scientists must figure out if the rise in deaths is because the panther population is growing or because there are more roads, homes and drivers in panther territory.

A broken mission

Cougars range from Alaska to the southern reaches of South America. But the panther, a subspecies, isn't found anywhere but Florida's southern end, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a selling point to Florida tourists and wildlife lovers, showing up on brochures and websites.

The cat was first listed as an endangered species by the federal government in 1967, when there were about 30 panthers left. These big cats need vast swaths of land, and various environmental groups have banded together over the decades to protect the cats and the lands they use for hunting and breeding.

Typically environmentalists have stood together, opposing development plans and road expansion projects aimed at opening up all of South Florida for urbanization.

But recently a divide has emerged over the development Priddy and the other landowners are involved in.

The permit application is under the review of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is expected to be ruled upon soon.

The development includes about 60 miles of roads and highways and would place about 330,000 people and their homes in the middle of panther land. It's a simple equation: More roads equal more dead panthers.

Naplesnews

“She is part of the effort to obtain a regional incidental take permit, which is associated with building new cities in rural lands,” said Jennifer Hecker, who was with The Conservancy of Southwest Florida until last month and now works for the Charlotte County estuary program. “There are already documents filed, including (ones from) the Priddy family, for development on their property.”

Groups like the Florida Wildlife Federation and Audubon Florida support the development plan and pitched the plan, along with developers and corporations like King Ranch, to The News-Press editorial board and other newspapers. But other groups say the development will chop off too much panther habitat and put more cars near panther dens.

The Conservancy is against the permit, so are Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER.

PEER says the Immokalee incidental take permit and developments like it will lead to the extinction of panthers.

Hecker said the development proposal was originally for 16,000 acres, not the 45,000 acres now being considered. The Conservancy was willing to listen to the first offer but decided to back out of the deal after the landowners nearly tripled the development footprint.

"That was the moment of truth, and we actually chose to step out because we did not feel the development plan that was being pursued was striking a balance between development rights and the panther recovery plan," Hecker said. "It is allowing an enormous area of new growth to occur in some of the most environmentally sensitive lands out there."

Florida panther

Puma concolor coryi

Appearance: Adults are tan with lighter colored fur on their legs, belly and lower chest and weigh about 100 to 160 pounds and are 6- to 7-feet in length. Kittens are spotted and have blue eyes.

Habitat: Most of Florida's estimated 180 panthers live south of Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River in wild preserves, state and national parks and private ranches and farms.

Behaviors: Panthers are mostly reclusive but have been spotted more in recent years as the population rebounds. They are ambush predators capable of jumping 15 feet to snag and kill prey. Feed mostly on deer, raccoons, black bears and wild hogs.

Source: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.