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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Friday, December 14, 2012

Highway deaths continue to grow for the bottlenecked Florida Puma population with a new annual record of 26 Cats killed in 2012..........There are supposed to be 3 distinct populations of at 240 Pumas in the southeast but the USFW does not have the cajones to make this happen in the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge and perhaps the Smokey Mtn Ntl Park,,,,,,,With each of these regions with deer aplenty to support a viable Puma population............As the rock recording artist Stephen Stills once penned on one of his two classic(1972-3) MANASSAS records , "ISN'T IT ABOUT TIME WE LEARNED????????"

Florida Panther Deaths in 2012 Hit Record High
Two Road Fatalities, Days Apart, Raise Toll to 26

ORLANDO, Fla.— The deaths of two endangered Florida panthers struck on roads this week brings the number of known deaths this year to 26, the highest on record. The deaths highlight the urgent need to protect habitat for the panther's South Florida breeding population, as well as the importance of reintroducing panthers to the swampy border between Florida and Georgia to broaden the weakening gene pool of the population.

"Florida panthers are dying on roadways they have to cross in their day-to-day lives because they're increasingly squeezed into smaller fragments of land between developments," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. "These beautiful cats are under siege from out-of-control growth and threatened by inbreeding."


In 2009 the Center filed a scientific petition seeking the designation of critical habitat for panthers in South Florida, followed by a second petition in 2011 calling for reintroduction to establish a second population in Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The Fish and Wildlife Service rejected both petitions, even though the agency's own recovery plan calls for protecting habitat and establishing three viable, self-sustainable populations of at least 240 panthers apiece within their historic range in the southern United States. Florida panthers are thought to number between 100 and 160 animals at present, in a single population.

"The Florida panther desperately needs more habitat protection and a second population center in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge," said Robinson. "More can be done to save these great cats, but it has to be now, before it's too late." 
Background

Florida panthers once ranged from Arkansas and Louisiana eastward across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and parts of South Carolina and Tennessee.  Although male panthers have traveled to other parts of Florida and even to Georgia in recent years, the breeding population is now confined to South Florida, where it ekes out a living on less than 5 percent of its original range. 

The 2008 Florida Panther Recovery Plan, written by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, calls for protection of remaining Florida panther habitat in South Florida. But existing measures have failed to keep pace with the development of thousands of acres in recent years.
AAs
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

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