Keeping Panthers and People From Colliding

  • Rebecca Galligan with her dogs Roscoe and Sable in their new panther-proof pet house. Galligan and her husband lost their dog Riley to a panther, so they had this enclosure built to keep their pets safe. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

People are killing Florida panthers.
Usually it’s not intentional. But
Rebecca Williams reports biologists
are trying to figure out how to keep
panthers and people from running into
each other:

Transcript

People are killing Florida panthers.
Usually it’s not intentional. But
Rebecca Williams reports biologists
are trying to figure out how to keep
panthers and people from running into
each other:

There are only about 100 Florida panthers left in the wild. They’re endangered.

If you live down here, it’s one thing to know there are panthers hunting for food in the Everglades. But it’s something else when they visit your backyard.

(sound of tropical birds singing)

Rebecca Galligan and her husband didn’t give panthers all that much thought. Until one day, when they came home from work, and found their dog Riley had been killed.

“The scratches on the body and the way he’d been killed it was pretty obvious it was some sort of wild cat.”

Two days earlier something had killed their neighbor’s sheep. Then a dozen goats got killed.

A biologist decided the predator was a panther. In the past few years in South Florida, more people have been losing pets and farm animals to hungry panthers.

Galligan calling to dog: “C’mere, have a seat!” (Roscoe sniffs the microphone)

Now, when she’s away, Rebecca Galligan keeps her dogs Roscoe and Sable in a little panther-proof house. It’s made out of steel and chain link fencing.

“There’s so much nature and wildlife, and so I mean, we just can’t destroy it all because we want to be safe. That’s why we had this pen built, so we can keep the animals a little safer from the animals that live around us.”

And a lot of people here think the panthers have a right to stick around.

But some say there’s a gaping hole in the law that’s supposed to protect panthers.

The panther has never had what’s called critical habitat set aside. That means developers don’t have to consider the land panthers need to survive. Panther habitat or not, they can just build.

So panthers are getting crowded out by subdivisions and huge new cities.

Andrew McElwaine is president of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. He’s asked the Obama Administration to officially give panthers that habitat.

“So, the more habitat we take away, we’re forcing panthers to move out. We’re getting reports of panthers in urban areas of Southwest Florida looking for somewhere to live, if you will.”

And, as people move in, panthers are becoming roadkill.

Last year 10 panthers were killed by cars. So far, this year, six more panthers have been killed.

(sound of cars whizzing by)

“There are some panther tracks here. There’s one there… and there…”

Mark Lotz is a panther biologist. We’re hanging out in an underpass below the highway. It was built for panthers. Miles of fences run along the highway and make a funnel, so panthers have to go below the road.

Lotz says there are 36 panther underpasses on this stretch of highway. And he says fewer panthers get hit here. But underpasses are expensive – about $2 million each. And giving panthers room to live isn’t always even that simple.

Lotz says the biggest challenge is getting people to adapt to panthers. To him, the cats are majestic. But he also knows a lot of people think they’re terrifying. Somebody actually shot a panther a few months ago.

“Naysayers could make the argument there’s no panthers in Pennsylvania or any other eastern state and things are going just fine. But then I would counter – look what’s happening with deer populations there. You know, panthers are part of the ecosystem. Without them there’s just something missing. In a way part of the wildness disappears.”

But if panthers keep running out of space, they could disappear.

We talked to the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. And we asked him whether he’d set aside critical habitat for panthers.

“Yeah, we’ll have to get back to you on that.”

That’s been the kind of response he’s given to other reporters too.

Giving panthers habitat protection would mean more obstacles for developers. And, in this economy, that could be pretty unpopular.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Cougars Creep Into Suburbia

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:


On a June morning two years ago, David Hanawalt was hunched over a
flower bed in his back yard loosening the soil with a hand rake. He says
he caught something out of the corner of his eye moving toward him:


“I started to prepare myself because it seemed like a large dog that was
making a beeline for me.”


(Allen:)”As if it was going to jump on you?”


“Yeah. And as soon as I stood up and turned it veered off. And the way it
ran, the way it moved, and its ears, I swear it was a cat.”


The cat disappeared into a patch of brushy woods behind his
house. Hanawalt says he became more convinced it was a cougar when his wife, T, saw
a big cat with a long tail sauntering across a neighbor’s blacktop driveway.


“…And it was just walking up like this. Just walking up. And then it went
just right off into those woods. Casually. It wasn’t in any hurry.”


The creature’s nonchalance is what has people in this northern Michigan
neighborhood worried. Some of them have read David Baron’s book
Beast in the Garden. It recounts how people have built their houses in
foothills surrounding Boulder, Colorado, right into prime mountain lion
country, then they saw cougars coming into their yards, taking their dogs and cats.
Eventually, a cougar killed a high school boy when he was jogging on a
wooded trail outside Boulder.


There are significant differences between the situations in Colorado and
Michigan, but author David Baron says if people are seeing a cougar and
it’s not running away from them, and in fact begins to approach them, then
that can be a warning sign:


“That’s what was seen in Boulder in the years before there was a fatal
attack not too far from Boulder. That’s what was seen in Missoula,
Montana back in the late ’90s before a little boy was attacked who did
survive. But again, if there are multiple reports of what is clearly a cougar
in one neighborhood, it’s probably worth looking into.”


Back in the northern Michigan subdivision Patty Barrons lives in the
house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It backs right up to a stretch of woods.
She was walking up the street one early morning last August when she
spied a big cat heading into her back yard. She took off running for her
front door because she remembered she’d left her housecat on the back
deck:


“…And I ran through the house, and onto my deck and down the two steps.
And went, I can’t believe I did this, it’s so embarrassing but I went, shoo,
shoo.”


It didn’t shoo.


Instead, Barrons says, it turned and took two steps toward her. She took
two steps back onto the porch. Barrons describes the animal as
enormous. She says she and the big cat watched each other from a
distance of fifteen feet for about half a minute:


“The face when we looked at each other eye to eye I felt that I was looking
at, I mean I knew I was looking at a lion. I knew I was looking at a lion,
there was no doubt. It was very muscular. It never crouched down or
anything so I didn’t feel threatened. But it stared at me and then, um, it
turned and walked around my flower garden, behind the tennis courts
and kept going.”


Patty Barrons keeps a careful eye out when she takes her early morning
walks, and she won’t work in her garden in the early morning or
late evening hours anymore.


(Sound of model airplanes buzzing)


Next to her house is an open field where kids play soccer and neighbors
walk their dogs, and its where T Hanawalt’s sons fly the remote controlled
model airplanes they love to build, but she won’t let them go out by
themselves anymore:


“Day or night. I mean they used to run around this neighborhood and play
with all the children at night and we’re not doing that anymore. I just, I
can’t have that it’s too scary. In fact, I’m looking to move.”


State wildlife officials won’t come out to investigate unless there’s clear
evidence of what could be a cougar. That means a photo, a paw print,
maybe some scat or droppings from the animal.


The people in this neighborhood didn’t get any of that, but now they have
their cell phone cameras handy.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Cougars Paw Their Way East

When you think of cougars, you usually think of the big cats roaming mountains in the West. But researchers say evidence of cougars in the Midwest has increased considerably over the last fifteen years. So far, scientists say, the big cats have not settled permanently in the region.
Bob Allen has more:

Transcript

Researchers say confirmed evidence of cougars in the Midwest has
increased considerably over the last fifteen years, and the number of
unconfirmed sightings by the public ranges into the hundreds. But so
far, scientists say, the big cats have not settled in the region. Bob Allen
has more:


The Eastern Cougar Network tracks hard evidence of cougars in
Midwestern states. That means photos, DNA samples or a carcass
confirmed by an expert.


Clay Nielsen is a wildlife researcher at Southern Illinois University in
Carbondale. He’s the scientific advisor for the Cougar Network and he
thinks cougars likely are dispersing from Western states where their
population is growing but their habitat shrinking. He says carcasses
found in the Midwest mostly turn out to be young males:


“And so a major limitation of getting populations to become established
has a lot to do with females getting here. Because some of the habitat in
the Midwest especially the forested areas the big woods are going to be
probably good habitat for them.”


Wildlife scientists say there’s no confirmed breeding population of
cougars east of the Dakotas.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Cash Strapped Biologists Lean on Volunteers

  • The lynx was recently considered extinct in Michigan until a trapper caught one. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by trained scientists:

Transcript

For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife
protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t
have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new
movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee
reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by
trained scientists:


Ray Rustem says wildlife biologists these days are often chained to their
desks.


“Years ago, when I first started with the Department of Natural
Resources, wildlife habitat biologists spent quite a bit of time in the field
actually doing fieldwork. With the types of things that are going on now,
they’ve become much more in getting the planning done and we’ve had
to shift some of that fieldwork done to the technician level. Frankly,
yeah, we could always use additional people out there.”


Rustem is with the Wildlife Division of the Michigan Department of
Natural Resources. He says state funding has fallen steadily for years,
and one way he’s made up the difference is by involving Michigan
citizens. Rustem says the DNR uses dozens of volunteers for its frog and
toad survey in the early part of the summer.


“This is our tenth year and we’ve got at least 120 people who’ve been
doing this all ten years. That’s a tremendous amount of data that’s being
provided for us on information about species and where they’re located.”


Many groups are now using so-called citizen scientists to collect data.
Sally Petrella is a biologist who works with the non-profit organization
the Friends of the Detroit River.


“We’ve cut out so much of the funding for regular science that there’s a
real lack, and citizen scientists can cover far more areas than
professionals can, at a much lower cost.”


Petrella is standing beside the murky, reed-choked waters of the Rouge
River Watershed. It’s home to six species of frogs and toads. Every
summer, Friends of the Detroit River enlists the help of 700 people to
listen for the creatures as they call to each other from the marshy
grasses.


Petrella is standing beside one of her more loyal volunteers… Al Sadler.
Sadler admits that part of the appeal is the walk along the banks of the
river… but he also believes that public participation in wildlife
protection has become an absolute necessity.


“I think that it’s required if we plan on keeping any wildlife areas
around. I think that if citizens don’t get involved, I think that people
won’t know what they’re going to miss, and before we know it, there
won’t be much wild places left.”


Sadler is a fairly typical citizen scientist. He has a day job as an engineer
and volunteers in his spare time, but there are also people with advanced
degrees in biology and wildlife management who are called citizen
scientists simply because they don’t work for the government.


Dennis Fijakowski is one of those people. He’s the executive director of
the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy.


“We can’t count on the government to do everything for us. We have to
be a part of the solution.”


Fijakowski says ordinary people have made important contributions to
wildlife conservation. He says the lynx was considered extinct in
Michigan until a trapper caught one, and a rare Great Gray Owl was
discovered on a national wildlife refuge last spring by a photographer.


“You look back at the conservation history of our state and it was citizen
led. All of the important, the milestone decisions, legislation… it was
citizen led.”


John Kostyack with the National Wildlife Federation says involving
citizen scientists is great, but…


“They’re not really a substitute for having staff in the wildlife agencies…
state and federal and tribal. Because they are the ones who are going to
take this initial data, which is going to be very rough from volunteers,
and then use it to decide upon where to take the research next.”


And there have been cases in which citizen scientists have clashed with
state and federal governments. They are consistently at odds with government
officials over issues related to global warming and the Michigan Wildlife
Conservancy is locked in a bitter battle with state biologists over whether
the state is home to a viable cougar population.


The Conservancy’s Dennis Fijakowski acknowledges that the union
between government biologists and citizen scientists may not always be
an easy one, but he says the involvement of residents in the protection of
their state’s wildlife can only be a good thing.


“Because all anyone of us wants is that we pass on a wild legacy to our
children and grandchildren… and we’re not going to if we don’t get our
acts together.”


Many organizations offer citizens the opportunity to get involved in data
collection, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links

Cougars Still Stalking the Region?

For many years, state and federal wildlife officials have considered the cougar extinct in the Great Lakes region. However, many people claim to have seen the large predatory cat long after it supposedly disappeared. Conservationists debate whether these sightings are real and if they are, they wonder whether the cougars are wild or merely escaped pets. Investigations are underway in many states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and in Canada. Now, a wildlife biologist in Michigan says he has proof that a breeding population of wild cougars is living in the Upper Peninsula. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports: