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North American Wild Cats Slipping into Oblivion WASHINGTON, DC, March 8, 2002 (ENS) - The Florida panther has been listed as endangered since 1967. Once at home from eastern Texas and the lower Mississippi River Valley through the southeastern states, there are now only about 6O adult panthers in the wild anywhere in the United States, all hidden in undeveloped patches of Florida.
Ocelots once prowled the dense, chaparral thickets of south and east Texas and the Gulf Coast. The ocelot has been listed as endangered in the United States since 1972 and is also endangered in Mexico. Its historic range took in Arizona and Texas, south to Central and South America. Today ocelots are found in a few small areas in South Texas, and they are extirpated from Arizona. A comprehensive report compiled by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and issued last spring revealed that not only the panther and the ocelot but all wild cats are vanishing from the United States, Mexico and Canada. In the year since the NWF report was issued, felid recovery has not taken place. The disappearing cats are leaving behind natural ecosystems that are "imbalanced and vulnerable," the NWF warns. The imbalances left when these top predators disappear are overpopulation and declines among other species that share their habitats, says Elizabeth Murdock, chief author of the report. The eastern cougar, also called the puma, has been virtually eliminated from the eastern United States and Canada and is presumed extinct. Cougars once ranged from eastern Canada southward into Tennessee and South Carolina, where their range merged with that of the Florida panther. "The remaining population of this species is extremely small; exact numbers are unknown," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports. The loss of cougars and other felines in the eastern United States has likely contributed to the exploding numbers of white-tailed deer, Murdock says, resulting in everything from vegetation depletion to traffic accidents. Elimination of dominant carnivores can also lead to exploding populations of small and mid-sized carnivores such as raccoons, opossum, and skunks. "Conserving North America's cats is integral to protecting the continent's wildlife heritage and to saving many of the pristine wild places they call home," Murdock says. Canada lynx are now rare in the southern parts of their historic range, although they still survive in western Canada. By the early 1900s, lynx has virtually disappeared from Colorado, as a result of trapping and the use of poisons. The last confirmed lynx was illegally trapped on the Vail ski area in 1973.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW) has made an attempt to reintroduce lynx into the state from the Canadian province of British Columbia. Colorado biologists are tracking the 50 surviving lynx of the 96 re-introduced in the San Juan Mountains since 1999, and gathering new information on preferred habitat and prey species. Carnivore experts in Colorado and nationally know that mortality normally exceeds 50 percent in the first year of a carnivore reintroduction because of the specific habitat needs of predators. The lower than expected mortality rate for lynx is an encouraging sign said biologist Gene Byrne, who headed the Division of Wildlife effort to procure lynx from Canada. ?It?s still early in the re-introduction effort,? said Byrne, ?but I?m getting more and more encouraged every day.? The largest species of cat native to the Western Hemisphere, the jaguar, was listed as endangered in the United States in 1997. It is also listed as endangered in Mexico and Central and South America. Only a few jaguars are known to survive in the United States, in Arizona and New Mexico where they have been seen as recently as 1996. "The presence of the species in the United States is believed to be dependent on the status of the jaguar in northern Mexico," the Fish and Wildlife Service said in its final rule declaring the species endangered. "Critical habitat was found to not be prudent and therefore is not being designated," the agency said. Even bobcats, which still range across most of the United States, have suffered local declines and extirpations in some areas. Habitat loss is the single greatest factor in their steep decline, but American wild cats also die in predator control programs and traps set to serve the fur trade. Caught in the glare of headlights, the wild cats die on the highways or because roads fragment their habitat. "Roads pose a significant threat to wild cats because they not only place individual cats at risk, but they isolate cats into fragments of habitat, which can lead to inbreeding and territorial competition between cats," Murdock says.
The NWF report, part of the group's Keep the Wild Alive campaign, grew out of an international workshop sponsored by the federation in February 2000. It concludes that conservation of the few areas where wild cats still do survive is vital to keep them from extinction. In some cases, such as that of the Canada lynx in Colorado, reintroducing cats to former habitat areas is critical to their recovery. Successful reintroductions will depend on adequate public education and conservation efforts. Because much cat habitat in the U.S., Canada and Mexico is privately owned, addressing the needs and concerns of private landowners is essential to successful conservation of endangered cats, the NWF emphasizes. Murdock says it is important to incorporate habitat and wildlife corridor protection into development and transportation plans. This should include wildlife culverts, bridges and underpasses on both new and existing roads and no road alignments should be planned that directly threaten cat populations, she advises. The National Wildlife Federation is working towards protection and habitat conservation for North America's wild cats through national legislation, collaborative research and cooperative international efforts. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Florida panther (Photo courtesy 
Canadian lynx reintroduced into Colorado
(Photo by Michael Seraphin courtesy 
Ocelot cub (Photo courtesy 