Environmentalists to the end.
"Booming South Florida no longer has enough room for Florida panthers, according to a new federal wildlife agency report on bringing the big cats back from the brink of extinction.
'There is insufficient habitat in South Florida to sustain a viable panther population,' states the report released Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 'The prospects for population expansion into south-central Florida are questionable at this time.'
The solution: Move some of Florida's official state animal to other states -- wilderness areas in Georgia and Arkansas are the leading possibilities -- in hopes of building thriving new colonies there.
....
Panthers have been on the federal endangered species list since the first one was drawn up in the 1960s. The animals once roamed throughout several southern states, but these days there are far more Florida panther license plates -- 93,684 were sold last year -- than actual panthers.
State officials estimate there are about 80 panthers left in the wild, almost all confined to the state's swampy southwestern corner below the Caloosahatchee River. That area has seen some of the state's fastest development over the past decade."
Emphasis added.
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