page_title: Florida panther
section_title: Conservation status
hierarchical_section_title: Florida panther / Conservation status
caption_attribution_description: English: Florida panther at Audubon Center, Stuart, Martin County, Florida
context_page_description: The Florida panther is a North American cougar P. c. couguar population. in South Florida. It lives in pinelands, tropical hardwood hammocks, and mixed freshwater swamp forests.
  Males can weigh up to 73 kg and live within a range that includes the Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park, the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Picayune Strand State Forest, rural communities of Collier County, Florida, Hendry County, Florida, Lee County, Florida, Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Monroe County, Florida. It is the only confirmed cougar population in the eastern United States, and currently occupies 5% of its historic range. In the 1970s, an estimated 20 Florida panthers remained in the wild, but their numbers had increased to an estimated 230 by 2017.
  In 1982, the Florida panther was chosen as the Florida state animal.
context_section_description: It was formerly considered critically endangered by the IUCN, but it has not been listed since 2008. Recovery efforts are currently underway in Florida to conserve the state's remaining population of native panthers. This is a difficult task, as the panther requires contiguous areas of habitat – each breeding unit, consisting of one male and two to five females, requires about 200 square miles (500 km²) of habitat. This animal is considered to be a conservational flagship because it is a major contributor to the keystone ecological and evolutionary processes in their environment. A population of 240 panthers would require 8,000–12,000 square miles (21,000–31,000 km²) of habitat and sufficient genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding as a result of small population size. However, a study in 2006 estimated that  about 3,800 square miles (9,800 km²) were free for the panthers.  The introduction of eight female cougars from a closely related Texas population has apparently been successful in mitigating inbreeding problems.  One objective to panther recovery is establishing two additional populations within historic range, a goal that has been politically difficult.
caption: Panther at Audubon's Possum Long Nature Center, Stuart, Florida, September, 1992
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