Forrest Schaeffer, 2-5-08

A topic that hits close to home, the Florida Panther is now listed as Critically Endangered, which by the IUCN, (International Union for the Conversation of Nature), means that it is suspected that the animals population will decrease by 80% in the next three generations with current climate and ecological environments.

A sliver lining is that there is some research suggesting that the Florida Panther is not actually a subspecies of the American Panther, and thus it’s population should be added to the American Panther, which would drastically improve it’s standing on the IUCN scale. However, definitive results have not be forthcoming yet, and until then we still believe that the Florida Panther is unique, and thus very threatened.
This idea brings an interesting point across, I think. What we have in this situation is two very different outcomes:

1. A species that is losing ground in Florida, but still relatively strong in the rest of America
2. A species relatively strong in northern America, and one going extinct in Florida.

The way things look, people can hope for option 1 and then consider the problem with the Florida Panther solved, at least for now. However, this is just a distraction from what is really happening. If we think about this beyond just a question of if the ‘Florida Panther’ even existed, and think about the fact that SOME panther is going extinct in Florida, we still have a problem. It’s the usual denial argument again: if it’s not a ‘Florida Panther’, it’s not happening.

Let’s step back a bit and take a look at this local extinction and determine why it’s happening, regardless of if it’s going to remove the Florida Panther from the Critical list and on to the Extinct list. Let’s figure out why the environment can’t support this animal anymore, and what we can do to fix the problem. Then perhaps we’ll have an idea as to why we’re having problems globally.