Scientists credit cougars for panthers
Associated PressTheir population is up to about 87 in South Florida, a rebound attributed to crossbreeding with Texas cougars introduced in 1995.
Published August 22, 2005
WEST PALM BEACH - The Florida panther, near extinction a decade ago, is rebounding and increasing its range, and scientists say the introduction of Texas cougars is helping restore the panther's population.
The Florida panther is still endangered, and there aren't many. Scientists say their population is about 87 in South Florida, but that's up from about 30 adults in the mid 1990s - when they were perilously close to extinction.
Scientists attribute the population's rebound to the disputed 1995 introduction of eight Texas cougars into the panther's habitat for breeding purposes.
Crossbreeding was possible because Florida panthers and Texas cougars are part of the same species of cats, known in various places as pumas, mountain lions or catamounts. Scientists think the two populations used to interbreed to some extent in past centuries, when the Florida panther roamed throughout the southeastern United States and before it became isolated in South Florida.
A new study concludes, among other things, that the panthers and cougars' hybrid offspring reaches adulthood more than three times as often as purebred panther kittens.
"It's a success story, and it should be applauded as one," said Everglades National Park biologist Sonny Bass, who wrote the research paper with two scientists from Duke University.
Before scientists introduced the Texas cougars, "all indications seemed to show that this population was going to go extinct," Bass said.
He said there are six to 10 panthers living in Everglades National Park, which had been down to a single male. State and federal researchers report they've also noted a decline in signs of inbreeding in the panther, such as kinked tails.
The panthers are doing so well, in fact, that they're facing the prospect of a new problem - the need for additional habitat in a region where sprawling development is booming.
Bass' study - to be published in January in the British journal Animal Conservation - could revive a controversy over approval of highways, airports, subdivisions and other development in prime panther habitat in southwest Florida.
For years, wildlife regulators relied on studies claiming that the panther population couldn't grow much because it was all the region's remaining undeveloped land could support, said Jane Comiskey, a University of Tennessee researcher who serves on a federal science panel for panthers.
Now it's clear that a genetically healthy panther population can grow into a larger territory, said Comiskey, who reviewed the new study before it was made public Thursday.
Earlier this summer, a panther was killed by a vehicle on Interstate 95 in St. Johns County in northeast Florida, far away from the animal's normal range and the farthest a panther has ranged since the population restoration project began.
And in reports in other journals, some experts have recently questioned whether the panther boost was because of other factors, such as more a hospitable environment.
But the state wildlife agency said it agrees with Bass' study.