Environmentalists
sue to protect vanishing Florida panther habitat
The suit contends federal agencies
have not done enough to protect the rare and endangered
panthers.
By CRAIG PITTMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published May
10, 2000
As expected, a coalition of
environmental groups sued three federal agencies
Tuesday, contending they have not done enough to protect
the endangered Florida panther from South Florida's
sprawling growth.
The coalition, which includes the
Florida Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club, wants
to halt all development threatening the panther in those
fast-growing counties. They have sued the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and
Federal Highway Administration in federal court in
Washington, D.C.
The Florida panther appears to be
starting a comeback, with its current population
estimated at 50 to 100. Yet it remains one of the
nation's most endangered animals, and as Naples and
nearby Fort Myers have boomed, developers have pushed
into farms and ranch country, where rural areas where
the panther once roamed.
In the early 1990s, state and federal
officials designated 600,000 acres of privately owned
land in Lee, Collier and Hendry counties as prime
panther habitat. Save this land, they said, and the
panther might avoid extinction.
But since then federal officials have
granted permits for a new university, new churches, new
roads, new mines, new golf courses and several
subdivisions.
Records show that federal wildlife
officials have fretted about what Collier and Lee
counties' rampant development might do to panther
habitat, but they never did anything to block it,
according to the environmental groups.
The lawsuit challenges 26 projects
approved in the panther habitat. The federal agencies
are named because developers first get approval from a
county commission to build, then go to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for
permits.
"If we are serious about saving
Florida panthers, it's time to bring a common-sense
approach to land use planning in Southwest
Florida," said Mike Bauer, Everglades project
director for the National Wildlife Federation, part of
the coalition that filed the federal suit.
However, one of the biologists who
drew up the habitat maps said they were never intended
to be a tool to force property owners to save land for
the endangered animal. They were designed to encourage
property owners to preserve panther habitat voluntarily,
biologist Dave Maehr said when the groups first
announced their plans to sue.
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