Development company controls key to Florida panther survival
By Craig Pittman,
So what can be done to save the panther? According to the federal government's top wildlife official, its fate depends on a Miami real estate company known for running 30-minute infomercials that air repeatedly on Spanish-language radio and television.
The reason: That company, American Prime, controls the panthers' only escape route out of South Florida.
"If we give them the pathway, they'll find a way," Dan Ashe, who became director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service four months ago, said in an interview with the Times.
Although they are Florida's state animal,for decades panthers have been largely confinedto the peninsula's southern tip. But development and agriculture have shrunk their remaining habitat. The last time Ashe's agency objected to anything built in panther habitat was 1993.
As the panther population has been squeezed into smaller territory, a few young male panthers have swum across the Caloosahatchee River, heading north into the rest of Florida.
That's why Ashe contends the most crucial thing his agency can do now is to preserve a 1,100-acre parcel in Glades County owned by American Prime. The land is not pristine swamp or forest — it's been used as a ranch and a sod farm — but it's the place where the male panthers have been documented crossing the river.
"We want to preserve a corridor for the panthers to get across the Caloosahatchee," Ashe said.
Federal wildlife officials have long contended that the only way to guarantee a future for the Florida panther is to create more than one colony of them. Ideally, there would be three, each with at least 250 adult cats. Right now there's only one colony of 100-150 panthers.
Some panther advocates contend the federal government should capture a few male and female panthers and relocate them to create a new colony. But federal officials have always shied away from moving panthers to save the species.
"We'd like them to do it themselves," Ashe said. Although only males have crossed the river so far, "hopefully as the population expands to the south, you'll get exploring females as well," he said.
"We must take this opportunity to secure this property," said Laurie Macdonald of Defenders of Wildlife, a group has worked with the federal agency on panther issues. "That location is absolutely strategic."
What worries Ashe and others is that the route north is controlled by a company that once wanted to develop that land —- panthers or no panthers. Since the 1970s, American Prime has been touting real estate deals in Cape Coral and other communities in Southwest Florida in what was then panther habitat. To sell the land they used informercials on Spanish-language stations, some repeated 50 times a week.
Company officials did not respond to several calls from the Times about its land on the Caloosahatchee.Three years ago American Prime wanted to build 624 homes there — one less than the number that would trigger heightened state scrutiny of its plans —- as well as a marina with more than 200 boat slips. Glades County officials were happy to oblige the company's request for a land-use change, despite the warnings of environmental activists about the effect on panthers. One commissioner asked if the panthers couldn't just be moved elsewhere.
But the proposal ran into objections from the state Department of Community Affairs and other state agencies over its destruction of wetlands, its location in a flood-prone area and other issues. The project stalled.
Now, Ashe said, the owners are willing to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure panthers continue having a safe passage. Although Ashe talked openly about the need to preserve the property for panthers, his staff is tight-lipped about the status of the negotiations.
"It's looking kind of bleak," said Amber Crooks of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, which has been involved in trying to preserve the land. "It's out on the market for development."
The problem, according to Jennifer Hecker of the Conservancy, is money. Funds for buying environmental land are in short supply right now, from both state and federal agencies, she said. But if they don't preserve that land, "it really would doom the panther to eking out its existence on the remainder of its land south of Lake Okeechobee."
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