There's a panther problem in the Florida Wildlife Corridor

The idea of a corridor connecting Florida's increasingly fragmented wild lands has been gaining traction in recent years. It culminated with Gov. Ron DeSantis signing the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act in 2021. It targets protection for about 18 million acres of land that are crucial for keeping Florida's wild spaces connected.

But even though the last couple of years have seen record numbers of acreage preserved, questions remain about the potential viability of the corridor.

That's the subject of an article that is being published across the state — including at WUSF this week. Jimmy Tobias is an investigative reporter covering wildlife, public lands, public health, and the politics of conservation.

We're seeing a lot more land being conserved than ever before. The big question is: is it enough and isn't time a critical element here with the really increasingly rapid pace of development we're seeing in the state?

I think it's really important for people to remember that this is a wildlife corridor. And so a key part of his goal is to protect some Florida's most iconic animals, including the Florida panther, which really was the poster child for this project. And so I kind of looked at this corridor. I mean, it's a great ambitious, important, visionary conservation effort, but I looked at it from kind of the lens of is it going to succeed when it comes to Florida panthers?

And panthers in particular are under a ton of pressure from development in their core habitat stronghold in southwest Florida. That's kind of where I came at this project. How is the panther doing? What are the threats it faces? And is the corridor enough to really protect it with its limitations, because the corridor act has no regulatory teeth. And so what can stop some of these developments that some scientists and conservationists say are really dangerous for the panther?

With Florida being such a narrow state, it creates these choke points in the wildlife corridor we're seeing, particularly in the Orlando area with the huge amount of sprawl there. And in southwest Florida, where you look at where the the Florida panthers being corralled into these ever shrinking areas. So you focus on two big projects there and illustrates the problems with preserving much of the panther. Just give us an outline of what's going on with these projects right now.

Developers in Collier County and Lee County have all sorts of big developments that they'd like to see put in place. And that area of the state is really one of the key areas for panthers is where their stronghold is. And so these panthers need to get north, they need to use the lands that are going to be protected by the wildlife corridor to get north. But all these developments aren't helping, because not only do they eat up panther habitat, not only do they eat up portions of the wildlife corridor, they also bring with them tons of traffic, and traffic mortality is the leading cause of death for panthers.

I looked at the Belmar project in Collier County, the Rural Lands West project in Collier County, the Kingston project in Lee County. These are big projects that want to basically erect new towns in the middle of panther habitat. And they've been very controversial. They've had a hard time getting permitted.

But you know, the question is, if these go through, how much are they going to limit the panthers' ability to meet those recovery goals and move north and kind of fulfill the vision of the wildlife corridor? The conclusion I think I came to is the corridor act itself isn't really going to be able to stop these projects or significantly change them. It's only the federal Endangered Species Act that really has the power to shape these projects moving forward.

Environment

Preserve or develop? The race against time to protect Florida’s Wildlife Corridor

So obviously, the federal regulations have a lot more teeth, and maybe a lot more backing than the state regulations do.

Yeah, and you know, the feds don't have a very strong record of protecting the panther at all. But the (Endangered Species Act) really is the strongest law for protecting panthers. And so I think in some ways for the corridor's vision to be fulfilled in terms of a thriving panther population to the future, there's these other laws that also need to be turned to that's what's happening right now. These projects, they were poised for approval, even earlier this year. They it seemed like they were about to get the green light. But then a federal judge basically dismantled Florida's key permitting program in Florida, because it was in violation of the Endangered Species Act. And so now these projects are in limbo.

But you know, I think the key takeaway is that the panther and the wildlife corridor are intricately intertwined. And for the panther to thrive, it needs to move north, and all these major developments are not going to help it do so, especially because of the traffic generated by them.

The future of the corridor the future of the panther, a lot of it depends on what happens with these developments and and others like them. And so it's all kind of in limbo right now. But we were just really trying to take a close, hard look at this question of this iconic species, how it relates to the corridor and how it relates to the development pressures in its core habitat.

The panther is considered one of the symbols of Florida, right? It's a cuddly animal, what environmentalists call charismatic megafauna, and people get behind saving it. If there's so much trouble saving an area that's considered critical to saving this animal, it sounds like it doesn't bode well for the rest of the corridor.

The corridor is based on voluntary participation. And there's a lot of landowners out there who I think want to support that kind of vision. The question is when landowners have their own agenda, and they want to build big developments, what can people turn to? And it really is this law, the Endangered Species Act, which I would argue is probably our country's most powerful environmental law, even though it's not always well applied. It's kind of there to step in.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which is the federal agency that enforces how much will they bring to bear on these questions in the years ahead, because their past record is not very strong when it comes to the panther. But so much development is being proposed. And it has such a long way to go before it reaches those recovery goals that at some point, the agency's going to need to step up, or the courts will do it for them, perhaps like we saw in this recent case.

I think the really the goal of the article was just to put these issues in the broader context and to help people understand kind of what's at stake with this crucial species that is the face of the wildlife corridor.