![]() Save the Florida Panther tells the story of how that didn’t happen. But the onrush of development was ending that cushion, paving the way-literally-for the panther’s end in the wild.Ĭraig Pittman’s Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Only the human-resistant ferocity of Florida’s interior-“nothing down here,” as Jack Kerouac wrote, “but scorpions, lizards, vast spiders, mosquitoes, vast cockroaches & thorns in the grass”-had cushioned the panther from a similar fate. ![]() The Florida panther’s cousins had long since been wiped out in other Eastern states. Only a handful remained back then: twenty by one mid-1990s estimate, six by another, both numbers absurdly dire. Twenty-five years ago, however, those sighting chances were close to nil, and the odds were looking strong that, within a decade or so, no one would ever again see a Florida panther in the wild, because there simply wouldn’t be any. The state’s best population estimates range from 120 to 230 panthers. More important, they’re profoundly scarce. Florida panthers are stealthy creatures, despite their size, and do most of their prowling from dusk to dawn. C hances are, you’ve never seen Florida’s official state animal in the wild-not even you rural Floridians.
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