Nobody was "exterminating" them. They were protected since the early 1900s. It was a mongralized species unable to adapt past its evolutionary sell-by date. The new, bigger, meaner species is completely exotic to Florida - right down to its DNA. A product of Ivy League pinheads, anti-growth pols, and NGO greed all exploited sentimentalist cat-ladies and ignoramouses.
It's twice the size of the original. Our ecosystem gains nothing from its existence. They stay mostly on high n dry, drained farmland, not the in the glades, which was how they were sold.
It's comical that you actually think the good enviro-faries and the "state" (lol) are saving something, but, obviously, know nothing whatsoever about the lucrative management contracts, the land grabs and the constant harassment of farmers/ranchers. If I had time I'd tell you about the pay-to-play gate keeping on land deals - where these cats have never even set foot, yet huge sums are collected and passed around. Kinda like a sophisticated 3rd world check point.
The "Florida" panther was and still is a tool... like California salmon and spotted owls. I know this because I've been here through all of it. So was my late friend and FReeper (Glades Guru) Jan Jacobson, who ran the Everglades Institute. These were part of his life's work.
You should probably advocate for Texas wildlife... not Florida.
If the Florida panther was not over-hunted why was it in decline? Animals that do not have a large enough breeding group/gene pool due to loss of habitat and resulting disease, disruption by an introduced predator or humans overhunting go extinct unless another branch of the species can be introduced to widen the gene pool. Is that what happened to the Florida panther? I live in a rural area-and advocate for Texas wildlife-I also believe in the proper management of wildlife-that is the only way conservation works-you don’t let any species overpopulate and you don’t hunt it to extinction-game wardens and managers have to carefully keep it all in the goldilocks zone-no small task.
We finally have our black bears back, after they were totally hunted out for years-people from Cali who moved here are freaking out-they thought they were moving to a rural area with none of the mountain lions or bears they had in Cali-they were horrified about the mountain lions-and now the bears are back, moving in from the Davis mts and Big Bend area-oh, the horror of having to secure your trash and pets-I hope they move back to Cali-I like the mountain lions and bears more...