The endangered Florida panther currently occupies 5 percent of its historic range. Source: ABC7 Southwest Florida.
Florida panthers—Florida’s official state animal and the mascot of its hockey team—are distinguished by their tan fur, whitish-grey chests and bellies, crooked tails, and prominent black markings on the tips of their ears, tails, and snouts. Males can weigh up to 73 kilograms and measure up to 2 meters in length, and individuals can live up to 12-15 years in the wild. Florida panthers inhabit warm habitats consisting of wetlands, swamps, and mature upland forests, meaning that they only live in the southern portion of the state.
The Florida black bear, Florida's largest native land mammal. Source: Naples Daily News.
Meanwhile, the Florida black bear is the largest native land mammal in Florida. The Florida black bear has a shiny, black coat of long fur and a light brown nose and snout. The bear often hides in dense vegetation and is rarely seen in the wild but is known to inhabit around eight isolated habitats throughout Florida. What the two species have in common, unfortunately, is the fact that they both face conservation challenges in the state as urban development and rising sea levels gradually lead to habitat fragmentation.
Losing some of their habitats is inevitable at this point according to Allison Davis, a PhD student in natural resources at the University of Kentucky, but some urban planners and wildlife managers have created a roadmap to improve the connectivity of key areas that could mitigate the projected consequences of global sea-level rise. Florida’s population, however, is expected to have 15 million more people by 2070, while sea-level rise is expected to eat away at the state’s coastlines, making it an incredibly difficult task to protect these habitats. Researchers have concluded that in the worst-case scenario with urban sprawl and a sea-level rise of 1.8 meters, the panthers’ protected habitat will shrink in southern Florida by 3.4 percent, while the bears could lose up to 6 percent.
Despite the threat that the future holds for these animals, researchers are doing their best to avoid this outcome, and they have claimed that in the best-case scenario, if efforts to connect protected land are made, both bears and panthers could see an increase in their protected area despite losses due to sea-level rise and development: panthers could gain four large patches of protected habitat and bears could gain 77 patches. These efforts, however, will not matter if there are no animals left to live in these lands, and Florida panthers, already an endangered species, are under the constant threat of both bounty hunters and highway accidents, while up to 130 bears die every year from wandering onto a highway that infringes on their habitat.
The solution will not be perfect, and a lot of these animals will lose their lives, but there is still hope of saving these two species, and everyone—ranging from researchers and city planners to hunters and everyday citizens of Florida—needs to buy into the effort for this conservation project to succeed.