Catherine Rusoff
The 2024 calendar isn’t even halfway over, but more endangered Florida panthers have died this year than in all of 2023, according to state statistics.
Of the 14 deaths in 2024, 11 involved vehicles and another was killed by a train. Two other deaths were of “unknown” cause, according to statistics Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Experts say there are only between 120 and 230 adult panthers left in Florida. Most live in South Florida, according to Elise Bennett, director of Florida and the Caribbean for Center for Biological Diversity. Factors such as the growth of the human population and the increase Vehicle traffic in the panthers’ limited habitat are part of the reason why so many of the endangered cats are killed, Bennett said.
“The reason it’s so dangerous is because we have a growing human population and the infrastructure, the roads, the buildings, the higher traffic and the higher speeds… all of this is happening right in the heart of the last habitat remaining busy for the Florida Panther,” Bennett said. “They’ve been trapped in this small area of Southwest Florida, and that’s where we see most of these hit-and-runs.”
MARK NEWMAN/Getty Images
Although more panthers have died this year than last, Bennett said the number of panther deaths is still low. In 2021 and 2022, 27 panthers died each year. In 2020, 22 panthers died. Bennett said it’s unclear why panther deaths were just as low in 2023.
“That doesn’t change the fact that these road kills are painful and we really need to do everything we can to have fewer of them if we want our only remaining panther population to exist and eventually recover to a point where it no longer needs to be. to be more protected,” Bennett said.
Conservation efforts to protect the panther species are ongoing. Bennett said for the species to no longer be considered threatened, there would need to be three distinct populations of 240 adult panthers each, something she said is a “long way to go.” In an ideal world, panthers would be able to move freely between the three populations, crossing the state into ancient habitats like northern Florida and Georgia without significant risk. That’s the goal of the Florida Wildlife Corridor, an initiative that “sets out to identify the most important places we need to protect so that panthers truly have a way to move north and return to their former range.” , Bennett said.
Bennett said conservationists hope to find a middle ground between the continued growth of the human population and the needs of endangered panthers.
“It’s really about making sure that when we have new development – we need places for people to live – that we do it in a compact way, that we’re not expanding into important panther habitat, and that every step we take is not eliminating the opportunity for panthers to return to habitat that could help sustain them,” she said.
