Roads, urban and suburban development, and agriculture decrease the amount of habitat available to panthers, fragment expanses of forested habitat preferred by panthers, and disrupt dispersal of young panthers. Panthers can tolerate a certain degree of development as long as corridors connecting large blocks of natural areas remain. In a study of cougars in the Santa Ana Mountains of southern California, Paul Beier (1996) found that some dispersing cougars successfully used corridors (even those with human activity) to travel between habitat areas. One corridor, the only one linking a small habitat area with a larger one, required cougars to walk under an 8-lane freeway, through an equestrian center, across the Santa Ana River, and along a golf course. In Florida suitable (and perhaps even better) habitat for panthers does exist outside of southwest Florida, but to date habitat fragmentation appears to have prevented panthers from reestablishing reproducing populations north of the Caloosahatchee River (see maps). Several panthers, however, have been documented north of the Caloosahatchee since the early 19  Panthers and Oranges  Back to Top  Habitat Degradation | ||||
70s. In 1973 working for the World Wildlife Fund, professional cougar hunter Roy McBride and his dogs treed an aged female panther in the Fisheating Creek area. In the mid-1980s Game Commission biologist Jayde Roof conducted sign surveys for panthers at Fisheating Creek as well as at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Collier County. Panther sign was regularly encountered at Fisheating Creek and sporadically encountered at Corkscrew Swamp (
"We get these self-fulfilling prophecies,…we need new roads to handle traffic, but the new roads create development and the development creates traffic."){kind=link}