State: Wanted: Home for 4 Texas pumas

Five years ago Florida imported eight female cougars from Texas in a desperate bid to refresh the gene pool of the endangered Florida panther. With the experiment coming to a close, state officials had initially decided to put the four surviving cougars on birth control and let them live out their days roaming the swamps of south Florida.

But federal officials have objected to that plan. They contend the Texas cats are taking up space that could be used by the slowly growing population of genuine Florida panthers, now estimated to number between 60 and 70 adults.

So in a report to be delivered to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission this week, state officials have taken a new approach to the puma problem: If federal officials want to pull those Texas cats out of the swamp, then let the feds find them all a new home.

State officials will gladly hand over the job to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because Florida's past efforts at placing other experimental cougars in captivity have led to sharp criticism, said Darrell Land of the state wildlife agency.

"We're a little gun-shy," Land said last week.

But passing the job off to federal officials has not warded off further criticism of the state agency.

"We told them two years ago they needed to remove those cats," complained Steve Williams of the Florida Panther Society, an advocacy group based in White Springs. He said state officials had promised some time ago to figure out a solution, then failed to do so.

The state agency's report contends that "disposition of these pumas is a socially and politically difficult issue," and even refers to the problem of finding them a home as "dicey."

But to biologist Dave Maehr, author of The Florida Panther: Life and Death of a Vanishing Carnivore, "It doesn't seem to me that it should be such a problem." Why, he asked, is it hard for the state to call a zoo or a wildlife refuge and find a home for the Texas cats?

The root of the problem, according to the state's report, is that when the experiment began nobody thought about what would happen to the cougars once it was over.

Instead biologists and government officials were focused on finding a way to refresh the panther's weakened genetic stock, to help eliminate problems with heart murmurs and other birth defects that seemed certain to doom the animal to extinction.

Texas cougars are the Florida panthers' closest kin in the mountain lion family. By importing a handful of healthy female cougars and turning them loose in panther territory, the state hoped to breed a healthier hybrid.

The first two cougars arrived at Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve near Naples in March 1995. In all, the state released eight female Texas cougars into the wilds of south Florida, equipped with radio collars to track their movements. Three were killed, one by a hunter, before they could bear any young. But the other five lived long enough to find mates among the male panthers.

They produced 36 hybrid kittens, so many that some experts have now expressed concern about whether the hybrids might swamp the purebred panthers. To complicate matters, one of the original cougars mated with a mature hybrid, producing what are called "backcrosses."

So it was clearly time to end the experiment.

The state implanted a contraceptive in one cougar and made plans to put the remaining three (another had died) on birth control, too. But in November 1999 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service objected to leaving the cougars out in the wild.

"If a cougar is out there, it's holding a niche that a Florida panther could occupy," explained Jay Slack of the federal agency's south Florida office.

But where to put them? Land said the state would like nothing better than to send the surviving Texas cats home, but Texas officials have made it clear they do not want the aging pumas back.

So where to put them? The question conjures up bad memories from the state's previous attempts to place other experimental cougars -- attempts that resulted in at least one of them being killed.

A few years ago state officials released more than a dozen Texas cougars near Osceola National Forest to test whether an animal almost identical to the endangered panther could make its home along the Suwannee River and Okefenokee Swamp.

By the end of the experiment, seven cougars had been killed -- two shot by arrows, one caught in a trap. And the cougars had slaughtered deer, calves, elk, hogs, a horse and one unlucky house cat that wandered outside at the wrong time.

The public uproar was so great that the state's plans to start a north Florida panther colony have now been abandoned, according to the state report.

After the experiment ended those cougars wound up sold to an animal dealer and at least one was later shot during a canned hunt, according to Maehr.

"It was stupid," he said. "They disposed of the animals in the easiest way they could, instead of going to a zoo or an animal retirement place. . . . Go visit, get letters of reference and find out the cost. Then get a written agreement that they'll keep them there until they die a natural death."

Then there was the so-called Waldo Cat, the offspring of the supposedly sterile north Florida cougars, that turned up near the town of Waldo near Gainesville. The Waldo Cat also wound up in the hands of a canned-hunt operation in Texas, and "boy did the stink hit the fan!" Williams recalled.

In the face of blistering criticism, state officials hurried to buy him back and find him a safer home in Silver Spring.

Federal officials are aware of the past problems, Slack said, and thus will be happy to take over the chore of finding a new home for the four cougars. He said they are already exploring possible homes, both in Florida and in other states.

"We're looking for a facility that would have the ability to ensure long-term housing where they would be kept in humane conditions," Slack said. And they would have to guarantee there would be no chance of the animals ever being hunted or shot, he said.

Back to State news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk