Florida’s endangered Panther population suffered a record number of deaths this year. 30 panthers have been killed this year in Collier and Hendry Counties, and an alarmingly high 21 have been killed in road accidents. The decline in habitat for the Panther thanks largely to recent development further east in Collier County is at least partially responsible for these stomach-turning. numbers.
For many years discussion has been underway of relocating some Panthers to a habitat less encroached by humans north of the Caloosahatchee River. However, this has still not happened for whatever reason.
The Panthers were increasing in numbers after being critically endangered in the 1990’s. However the recent explosive housing and road development in Collier County has limited the big cats habitat to a point where time is once again running out on Florida’s state animal.
The Florida Squeeze 
One major problem to panthers recovering is that it is just inappropriate to have as many of them in Florida as the delisting criteria now stipulates which is 3 separate populations of 240 each with one population being in another state. We now have more than twice as many panthers South of Lake Okeechobee as the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) criteria for land requirements per cat supports. The current population of 160 plus or minus needs 12 Million acres but only has 6 Million South of Lake O if u include urban areas. In fact the entire state doesn’t have enough land according to USFWS criteria for 2 – populations of 240 each equaling 480 cats.
Now one can see without a lotof specialized training that it is no surprise that panthers are getting run over more than stray cats and dogs locally in S Fla.
On top0 of that all these bright ideas like acquiring more land and wildlife underpasses for bears and panthers is quite counterproductive since that only facilitates more panthers, bears etc, which = many more headaches for those paying the tab for inappropriate high numbers of dangerous animals to be raised by state agencies and let loose on people.
Top, honest and credible biologists I know agree female temporary (e.g. 3-5 year) sterilization is past due to reduce and control inappropriate population increases of panthers.
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