The Florida panther—one of the world's most endangered animals—is being shortchanged by established science, according to a team of experts.
Fewer than a hundred of the large carnivores currently roam national and state parks and nearby private lands.
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To bring the elusive cat back from the brink of extinction, biologists and policy makers have relied on the "best available science"—the term for the scientific basis behind decisions aimed at preserving natural habitat and preventing further species decline.
But now a team of researchers hailing from universities across the U.S. claim the best available science fails to take important data on the panther's range into account.
The team's findings are slated to appear in the Journal of Wildlife Management in January 2006.
Establishing Rules
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—the federal agency in charge of protecting the panther—asked the team to review more than 20 years and 3,000 pages of scientific literature on the panther (Puma concolor coryi).
The reviewers quickly identified a major oversight: A prominent panther researcher had collected only daytime activity data and failed to acknowledge the cat's nocturnal nature.
Team member Michael Vaughan, a wildlife science professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, says this inadequate data ultimately led to the conclusion that panthers wouldn't travel more than 295 feet (90 meters) outside of a forested area.
None of the other panther researchers believed this conclusion, said FWS biologist Chris Belden.
But Vaughan said decisions related to development and land use in Florida were nevertheless based on a 90-meter rule. The decision presents a problem, since shrinking habitat is one of the greatest threats to the panther's survival.
"We haven't gone back and checked to see how much land was developed based on these [erroneous] guidelines," Vaughan said. "But my guess is land was developed that was probably good panther habitat."
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