Opponents of a subdivision near Centralia Road sighted a panther - or maybe it was a jaguarundi, an otter, a bobcat or a cougar.
By DAN DeWITT
Published August 12, 2004
BROOKSVILLE - Nowhere does Hernando County's wildlife seem as abundant as at zoning hearings.
Opponents of developments frequently report that the sites of future subdivisions are home to animals such as eagles, bears, red-shouldered hawks and indigo snakes, that are known to live in the county. They also say they have seen some creatures that may not live here.
At Monday's Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, one member of a group fighting a planned subdivision near Centralia Road reported seeing one of the state's most famous endangered species, the Florida panther.
Commissioner Al Sevier offered a correction. It was probably not a panther but a jaguarundi, a cat with a big tail and otterlike face native to South America.
He had seen one twice while driving on Centralia, he said.
Jerry Greif, the county's chief planner, offered that he had recently seen a jaguarundi, across the county in Ridge Manor Estates.
"I was out looking at this animal stopped in the road and he looked right at me and disappeared. I wasn't sure what I had seen and I asked a biologist here, and she said it might have been a jaguarundi," Greif said after the meeting.
"It had a long tail, so it wasn't a bobcat, and it was too big to be a house cat."
So, can this be true?
State naturalists doubt it.
"All I can say is, I've been looking for cat signs in the state of Florida for 30 years, and I've never seen any evidence of jaguarundi anywhere," said Chris Belden of the state's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
"No road kill, no museum specimens, no hunter kill. No evidence at all, according to my knowledge, other than sightings."
As for panthers in Hernando, he said, "anything is possible."
Male panthers, like bears, leave their home territory as soon as they reach adulthood.
"That's just the way they are wired," he said.
These young cats also seem to be roaming more as the panther population grows - from 30 cats to about 90, thanks to a breeding program instituted in 1994 - and as their South Florida habitat is whittled away by development.
Since 1998, several panthers wearing radio collars have been tracked crossing the Caloosahatchee River in rural Hendry County and heading north.
Another panther without a collar was killed as it tried to cross Interstate 4 in Hillsborough County last year.
Still, Belden said, panthers were eradicated in Central Florida a century ago; to make it to Hernando County, panthers would have to cross busy highways and pass through urban areas.
"I haven't seen any evidence," he said.
Carole Lewis of Big Cat Rescue - a nonprofit sanctuary in Tampa - doesn't buy it.
"The state of Florida will not acknowledge the well documented fact that the Florida panther is actually roaming from coast to coast, from Miami to Georgia," she said in an e-mailed response.
"All I can say is, I've been looking for cat signs in the state of Florida for 30 years, and I've never seen any evidence of jaguarundi anywhere."
"The reason (for the state's position) is that development can't happen in protected panther ranges and the only place that the state wants to admit we can't build on are the Everglades," Lewis said. "We have frequently seen photos and videos of Florida panthers in the Tampa area and I have seen the tracks."
Sherry Collins, who lives in a wooded area near Centralia, said she has seen more than tracks.
At the end of the most recent drought two years ago, a large cat appeared at a pond on her property.
"He was actually out there digging for the last drop of water," she said. "He was less than 100 feet away, maybe 50 feet. Fortunately, he was more interested in the water than in eating me."
"He was was mostly tan . . . had a big tail like a lion and he left big paw prints at the pond. This thing was huge. It was bigger than a German shepherd," she said.
Sevier is equally sure he saw a jaguarundi.
Unlike a bobcat, "its tail was as long as its body, which is the main thing," Sevier said.
"This cat, including its tail, was about 5 feet long. If it was a house cat, it was a big one."
Lewis' organization doesn't rule out such sightings. Jaguarundis were once kept as pets, and Florida may have a feral population dating from the 1940s, her organization's Web site states. But she also said people frequently confuse jaguarundi with river otters.
Vince Morris of the state's Division of Forestry has never seen signs of either animal in the several years he has spent working in the Withlacoochee State Forest.
The panthers people see are possibly escaped cougars, he said, which are not uncommon in the state.
"There have historically been lots of wildlife parks in Florida. People's cats get out all the time; it's just a little worse when one of these gets out," Morris said.
Even more likely, he said, is that people who think they see panthers - or jaguarundis - are actually seeing something completely different, and compared their sightings to reports of ghosts and UFOs.
"I've heard people who are absolutely convinced they have seen these things. You can't say that it didn't happen . . . but I sort of doubt it.'
