Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge

The first of many signs marking the Florida Wildlife Corridor was set in place on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2024, at the Fakachatchee Strand Preserve State Park. The sign designates an entrance to a Southwest Florida portion of the 18 million acres being preserved for animals to let people know they are also welcome to explore the growing state-long pathway

When the wildlife corridor was envisioned, subdivisions with 10,000 houses and hundreds of thousands of feet of office space were not planned.

As agriculture gives way to planned developments, many worry the Florida panther is on a path to doom.Environmentalists say planned communities — Kingston in eastern Lee and Bellmar in eastern Collier and both the size of small cities — could hurtle the Florida panther from the Endangered Species List to extinction.

The Florida panthers’ numbers dwindled so quickly over the the early 1900s that hunting them was banned in 1958. In 1967, panthers were the first animal to be put on the federal Endangered Species List, and in 1973 the puma, a big cat relative, was named a Florida protected species.

When Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act into law in the summer of 2021, the occasion was met with a flurry of glowing headlines and general celebration by conservationists across the state. But the effort to protect the integrity of Florida’s landscape is a race against time. It remains entirely legal to develop land within much of the corridor’s boundaries, even if such development would destroy the landscape-scale connectivity the law is meant to preserve. The corridor, in other words, remains under siege by development. And the state and federal governments have not been too eager to stop it.

Pointing to permits in “regulatory limbo,” the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Monday asked a judge for a partial stay of a ruling in a legal battle about a 2020 decision that shifted permitting authority from the federal government to the state for projects that affect wetlands.U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss on Feb. 15 ruled that federal officials did not follow required steps before transferring the authority to the state. Moss issued an order vacating the approval of the shift.

A new Protect the Panther license plate is now available to Florida motorists. The new design features a striking photograph taken by Carlton Ward in 2018 of the first female panther documented north of the Caloosahatchee River since 1973, along with her kitten.

Opponents of the Town of Big Cypress say it will doom the Florida panther by bringing more people into the animals' domain, creating more traffic to hit and kill more panthers

The Florida Wildlife Corridor Act is helping create new opportunities to help the endangered Florida panther, but the species is facing some new and emerging threats including a neurological disorder called feline leukomyelopathy and a number of proposed new developments in Lee and Collier counties. We take a closer look in a conversation with Amber Crooks from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

Collier County designated March 18 as Save the Florida Panther Day to bring more awareness to the endangered species.