Ron Sutherland and John Davis of the WILDLANDS NETWORK are on the right track in the southeast, seeking to get Carolina Panthers Football Team Executives and Players on board with them in encouraging state, regional and Federal Officials to restore Pumas to the landscape............As Ron and John so accurately point out, "Our society has a dubious tendency to name developments and sports teams after places we have wrecked and animals that we have annihilated"....................What a great promotion and calling of attention to the Carolina Football team this would be and what a great impact the Teams endorsement of such an endeavor would have in galvanizing regional politicians, businessmen and "the folks" to restore the Puma and Wolf to the Appalachians......................As the majority of you Blog readers know so well, "apex predators like Panthers and wolves help keep prey numbers in check and keep browsers moving, so the plant eaters don’t eat away wildflowers and hardwood saplings"........... "Ecosystems with full suites of native predators are less likely to produce zoonotic disease outbreaks, such as of Lyme disease"................. "To oversimplify admittedly complex interrelations, if we had panthers and wolves in healthy numbers in wild parts of the East, we’d have fewer fatal collisions between motorists and deer and we’d have less Lyme disease"

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article53568270.html

Go Panthers! (And we mean the real ones)

BY RON SUTHERLAND

AND JOHN DAVIS

Special to the Observer

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article53568270.html#storylink=cpy