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The Florida Panther

Life and Death of a Vanishing Carnivore

ISLAND PRESS

GETTING OUR FEET WET

13 January 1986 * I saw my first living panther on this day in one of the remotest corners of the Fakahatchee Strand. This part of southwest Florida was an ankle-to-waist-deep second-growth cypress swamp into which I was leading our capture crew, a motley collection of full-time and part-time employees of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission (GFC), toward Panther 8, an old female with an unremarkable history as a study animal. Other than the grogginess that accompanies an alarm-assisted awakening before daylight, the six of us showed little emotion. The scheduled recapture was just another day of work that promised to shed little light on the status of the population. She was one of only two study animals—remnants of a fitful five-year study that had concluded the endangered Florida panther was a lost cause.

Behind my facade, however, I was feeling anxiety from my inexperience mixed with the suppressed excitement of seeing one of the rarest animals in North America as I did my best to avoid the deep holes and cypress knees that could plunge me yet deeper into the icy January waters. While Roy McBride, our lanky houndsman from west Texas, led his sloshing dogs toward Panther 8's signal, I listened to the receiver's beeping as Darrell Land, a biologist fresh out of graduate school, lost a sneaker to a particularly deep gator hole. Melody Roelke, our husky and energetic veterinarian, chattered with animation to a guest journalist. Biologists Jayde Roof and Walt McCown relentlessly added to a visiting writer's fear of swamps and large, slithering, sharp-toothed reptiles. The fruit of our labor and the hounds' short chase was this thin and grizzled panther. As we readied our safety equipment, she stared at us balefully from 20 feet above in a spreading laurel oak. The capture was uneventful, Female 8's recovery from anesthesia was slow, and none of us looked forward to retracing the swampy mile and a half to our vehicles. The obstacle-strewn route was even more hazardous to cross now under a moonless and star-studded sky. Muffled curses, splashes, and frequent thuds evolved into purple bruises the next day.

If the capture of Female 8 had been a letdown in expectations, Male 10, captured two days later, was just the opposite. As the first kitten to be captured in six years of fieldwork, this five-and-a-half-month-old panther represented a glimmer of hope for the future. Number 10 was the product of the pairing of Male 7 and Female 9, both residents of the Fakahatchee Strand and a future housing development known as the southern Golden Gate Estates. These two adults had been chased up the same tree about a year before, apparently interrupted in the act of mating. Jayde Roof still bears scars as evidence of this unusual event: Panther 9 clung to his backside as she slid, partly drugged, out of the tree. In contrast to his parents', Number 10's capture was uneventful—except that, because of Jayde's sensitivity to poison ivy, I had the dubious pleasure of donning the climbing spikes and extracting the drugged kitten from his refuge in a spindly cypress. With my heart pounding from anxiety and exertion, I unceremoniously pitched the 34-pound panther into the net, then watched as the attention of my coworkers switched from the top of the tree to the capture below. Left unwatched to descend through the tangle of poison ivy, I was thankful for a fairly easy climb and a lightweight panther. I had neither the experience nor, certainly, the strength of Jayde, our usual climber (Figure 1.1). In the years to come we would watch Jayde on innumerable occasions, wedged precariously atop a swaying tree, holding an adult panther by one hand, arm extended for what seemed like hours, before dropping it into our cushion or lowering it slowly down by rope. Many of our successful captures were due solely to Jayde's skill in the most suspenseful aspect of our work.

For the next hour Melody examined the kitten, took blood samples, and monitored his recovery. I fumbled with metric tapes, calipers, and the first radio collar ever attached to a juvenile panther (Figure 1.2). The collar was big enough for an adult panther, and I worried that its size might impede his travels. But since his mother was doing the work for the family, perhaps it would not slow him down. Besides, within a few months a shipment of smaller collars would arrive. Melody noted that Number 10 had pale gum tissue and a dull, rough coat, signs of anemia that could be caused by parasite infestation. Although I had little to compare him with other than a dead panther and old Female 8, Kitten 10 looked pretty good to me and so my field notes reflected the subtle contradiction between our two evaluations. We could only guess at his age—most of the previous year's telemetry data had been lost or simply were never collected while there was no field supervision on the project. So exactly when Panther 9 and her first kitten emerged from their wooded den was only a guess. Our estimated age for the still-slightly-spotted cat was just less than six months.

His mother remained close by during the workup, circling the capture site until we left. Because of the surrounding swamp, we put Number 10 in a specially designed tent built with coarse-mesh nylon to prevent him from stumbling into the water and drowning before the anesthesia wore off. Leaving the door of the tent slightly open, we left him to be reclaimed by his mother. The next morning the tent was empty and the family was reunited: two radio collars, transmitting on different frequencies, emanated from the same spot in a distant corner of the swamp. Our intrusion into the family life of these two panthers had resulted in only a temporary separation, and we looked forward to the wealth of information this mother/son pair would ultimately provide.

Our accomplishment that day was a significant expansion of the work initiated more than a decade previously by a World Wildlife Fund—sponsored survey by Roy McBride and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Ron Nowak. Roy's treeing of an old adult female in Glades County back in 1973 became one of the compelling events that stimulated a wave of new research. They reported:

One panther was located and live-captured by McBride. Sign of this animal was found on the morning of 10 February near Gator Slough, about five miles west and one mile north of Lakeport, Glades County. The pack of eight dogs picked up the trail of the panther and quickly began active pursuit. After a chase of about 20 minutes, the panther climbed a cypress and was injected with a tranquilizer drug fired from a dart gun. The animal then came down from the cypress, and after a brief chase was treed again in an oak where it was overcome by the effects of the drug. McBride brought the animal out of the tree, and on examination found it to be a nine or ten year old female that had apparently never given birth to young. It appeared to be in poor condition and was infested with ticks. The panther soon recovered from the tranquilizer and was released. Observation of this animal confirmed reports of panthers in the area of the Lykes Brothers Ranch west of Lake Okeechobee.

It took another eight years before Chris Belden initiated the formal investigations that we were continuing. Belden started by logging reports of panthers originating from Florida and attempting to determine their veracity—in line with a 1978 recommendation by the Florida Panther Recovery Team, a group of biologists and others appointed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a strategy, known as a "recovery plan," to save the panther. This team of experts was one of the tangible products of the 1976 panther conference. They developed the first written recovery plan that served as the outline for the first decade of fieldwork. As in many studies of wildlife of unknown status—Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster included—the first task is to quantify the creature's basic distribution. It was remarkable how the widespread sightings and reports of panther sign, especially tracks, generally turned up near human population centers, with a noticeable peak in observations around rush hour (when most people are out and about but most panthers are not). Most reports turned out to be cases of mistaken identity. Belden soon learned that authentic reports came only from south Florida, particularly Collier County. Further, this was the only area from which specimens of actual panthers had been collected (as the result of roadkills) or living animals had been seen in recent times.

Panthers were conveniently rationalized as extinct in Florida by most agency personnel before 1973. Little had been written about them since David Newell's documentation of a 1935 hunting expedition (eight panthers killed) and a brief account of vocalizations and behavior by herpetologist Ross Allen in the Journal of Mammalogy in 1950. Jim Bob Tinsley wrote an informative popular account of the Florida panther based on historical notes and anecdotes in a 1970 vignette, but literally nothing was known about this animal's biology. Many of the reports Tinsley cited reflected Floridians' fears of panthers and their ignorance about wildlife in general during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Thus the panther treed in 1973 deserves great accolades. Not only did she demonstrate the panther's existence, but she also represented a bridge between the era of persecution and the era of conservation. In previous years, most of the panthers treed in Florida were no doubt dispatched quickly with lead.

16 January 1986 * With the capture of Panther 10 behind us we turned our attention to the Bear Island unit of the Big Cypress National Preserve. Of the 1.5 million acres administered by the National Park Service in south Florida, the 38,000 acres in the Bear Island unit were clearly superior in terms of soil fertility, abundance of forested uplands, and prey density. Deer and hogs were plentiful here, and I hoped to take advantage of this situation by radio-collaring the panthers that made it their home. It was at this time that I began learning the basics of panther sign identification—a frustrating educational process. None of my college training in wildlife at Ohio State or the University of Florida offered the basics of mountain lion sign identification. Like my previous work on Florida bird communities and on Florida black bears, this would be on-the-job training.

Hunts for uncollared panthers were sometimes as brief as a single day when luck ran high and tracking conditions were excellent. More often than not, however, the capture of a new study animal, if it was not the dependent kitten of a collared female, took weeks of reading blurred hieroglyphics left in mud and sand and piecing together the suspicions bit by bit. Our crew would split into groups—Roy McBride with his hounds, the rest of us on swamp buggies or on foot (Figure 1.3). The dogs, oblivious of the distinctive patterns left on the ground by panther feet, cast about for the odors left behind by the cats as they brushed against vegetation or left their scent in a track. As these odors were detected, the dogs would follow them like a rope until the line of scent disappeared or a panther was treed. Sometimes the dogs would retrace an entire evening of a panther's travels, reading the messages left on palmetto fronds, wild coffee leaves, or any of the hundreds of species of tropical plants that are found here. It often took hours to re-create the panther's path on these scavenger hunts, and we commonly covered many miles in a morning. The actual chase of a panther, however, usually lasted just minutes.

For the next week, although the hounds were unable to detect scent trails fresh enough to follow, we saw abundant panther sign—especially the tracks and scrapes of an adult female. A scrape is the result of a panther scratching up a mound of soil or leaves over urine or feces. These are used as a means of communication among panthers. Adult males leave scrapes throughout the year, but females scrape only when they are in estrus. These scent markers have several functions: they are apparently critical in the spacing of adults, they help males locate estrous females, and they help maintain social structure in the population.

20 January 1986 * While accompanied by Department of Natural Resources biologist Ken Alvarez, I came upon the tracks and scrape of an adult female panther along an old Bear Island logging road known as Gillette Tram. The signs were fresh enough to have been made the same day or the night before. A dense canopy of laurel oaks, red maple, cabbage palms, and cypress had helped preserve the fresh appearance of the tracks, but it was too late in the day for the dogs to follow the cat's trail. Red-eyed vireos, great-crested flycatchers, and other resident and wintering songbirds provided a musical backdrop during our mile-long hike into this mixed swamp. And the pungent, crawfish-filled feces of river otters, the rancid scat of a bobcat, the odorless pond apple droppings of a black bear, and the scattered pellets of white-tailed deer reminded us of the other creatures that also depended upon this forest. We were standing in the heart of the only place east of the Mississippi River where this combination of terrestrial carnivore species—panther, bobcat, and black bear—still live.

21 January 1986 * Roy and his hounds were out before dawn and hunted in the vicinity of yesterday's sign. The rest of us scouted for new sign or waited along Alligator Alley to intercept any dogs that might follow a scent trail across this busy highway. Despite the debatable notion that vehicles are the single most important cause of panther mortality, there was no debating with Roy the odds of his dogs making their way safely across, especially during the peak of tourist season. Any risk of losing one of his highly trained hounds was too great.

As the morning wore on, the temperature rose to the upper seventies, the wind picked up, and conditions worsened for panther hunting. The protective, jungle-like canopy over Gillette Tram, however, gave the hounds additional time to scour the area around yesterday's fresh sign. Because both wind and evaporation were minimized in this verdant setting, sign might very well last all day. At noon Roy's voice crackled over the radio. He had chased our uncollared female up a tree. Walt, Jayde, Darrell, Melody, and I drove as close to the cat as possible and then hurried on foot to the tree. Standing on a laurel oak limb that was partly hidden behind the fronds of a 20-foot-tall cabbage palm was the healthiest, sleekest-looking panther we had ever seen. Somewhat dazzled, we stood in awe of the tawny, obviously healthy, and well-fed young adult female, now crouched on a horizontal branch. Her attention was focused primarily on the hounds barking below. We were but annoyances—probably no more and no less significant than the occasional pesky mosquito.

Despite the elation of adding an important panther to our study, this capture was notable for its unsettling revelations about the inner workings of the team. The group I was responsible for directing suddenly became a bigger challenge than the research that had brought us all together. With a full two weeks of project supervision under my belt, I felt comfortable with the routine and decided that Female 11 would provide a good opportunity for me to expand my experience. But my decision to exercise what I thought was a right if not an obligation of my job—that is, pull the trigger of the gun that projects the drug-laden dart into the panther-upset a long-standing social tradition of which I was flat ignorant. The instructions I had received from my Tallahassee supervisor, Bureau of Research Chief Tom Logan, said nothing about such intricacies of personnel management and division of labor. These details would have to be learned on the job. It would be up to me to develop the team atmosphere necessary for safe captures even though the standard operating procedures, if any, were a mystery to me. Any number of disasters—ranging from injured people to dead panthers-could result from a disorganized capture effort. As much as Melody was always effusive and ever willing to talk about medical management and other details, Walt, Jayde, and Roy tended toward silence. Perhaps they just assumed that the proper protocol was obvious. Perhaps they were just waiting to see how their new boss would turn out. Only later would I learn that even though the dart hit Female II perfectly and the workup of the cat proceeded smoothly, I had unknowingly undermined my relationship with Roy, the resident marksman. Not only that but 21 January was Melody's birthday, and, to everyone's surprise, Walt had hidden a decorated cake in his swamp buggy for the occasion. The celebration was short-lived, however, and subdued. Roy left unusually quickly to tend to his dogs, no doubt dreading future captures with the pushy young project leader. Darrell was off stowing equipment. Jayde, for reasons known only to him, refused to partake in Walt's gesture of friendship to our veterinarian. By that evening, as we prepared for sleep at the Ochopee field station, I felt distinctly uneasy about the project's future.

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Excerpted from The Florida Panther by David S. Maehr. Copyright © 1997 David S. Maehr. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
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