The mountain lion once ranged throughout the Southeastern United States, from the coastal plains to the mountains. This formerly widespread species is now represented by the small population of the Florida Panther that survives in the wildlands of South Florida. Recent studies have demonstrated that the public lands of South Florida (Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve) are probably inadequate to support a viable panther population. Over half the home range area for radio-collared panthers has been on private lands. Of the 43 panther monitored during the 1980ís, only 4 ranged exclusively on public land. It has been estimated that public lands in South Florida would be able to support only 9 to 22 panthers, with doubt as to whether in-area reproductive capabilities could continue to sustain this number.

One of the primary tools for assessing the impact of the Everglades Restoration on the Florida Panther is the Deer/Panther Model being developed as part of the USGS Across Trophic Level System Simulation (ATLSS) modeling project. As currently configured, the ATLSS models are designed to operate over the region modeled by the South Florida Water Management Model, which provides the hydrologic input that drives the ATLSS models. A major deficiency of this modeling effort, with regard to assessing and managing the Florida Panther, is that the SFWMM region does not include some of the highest quality and most critical habitat for the panther. These critical lands include public and private lands to the west and north of Big Cypress National Preserve (BCNP). The public lands that are included in the SFWMM typically do not produce enough young panthers to maintain a viable population that can emigrate and colonize new areas. In fact, the current model area actually serves as a "sink" for young panthers produced by the breeding populations north and west of Big Cypress.

Until the region covered by the ATLSS Deer/Panther Model can be extended to include the breeding populations west and north of Big Cypress, it will be impossible to properly calibrate and test the Deer/Panther Model, and the model might be of little use for regional assessment and management of the Florida Panther. We propose to extend the area covered by the ATLSS Deer/Panther Model to include the core areas for activity and reproduction that lie outside the current boundaries of the SFWMM. As noted in a previous version of this proposal, carrying out this extension in a hydrodynamically exact manner would involve modification of the SFWMM 2- x 2-mile hydrology model. This would involve making use of historical satellite (LandSat) images to develop time series of hydrologic conditions and vegetation changes relevant to the quality of panther habitat.

Due to funding limitations, we here propose to develop only a very coarse hydrology model not hydrodynamically vigorous, but making use of estimates from other available models (including the NSM) to extend any particular scenario to the areas north and west of the BCNP. This will produce spatially and temporally varying estimates of water depth in this region, but without a full hydrodynamic linkage to the model which produced the particular scenario being investigated. This effort will require the following tasks:

The ATLSS Deer/Panther Model will be expanded to run over the added areas outside of the BCNP. This will allow direct comparison of ATLSS Deer/Panther output to panther radio-tracking data, much of which covers areas outside the boundaries of the WMM and current ATLSS models.

Visualization and analysis tools will be developed for analyzing panther radio-tracking data and comparing observations to ATLSS Deer/Panther model output over the entire range of panthers in South Florida.

A significant part of the funding for this research was provided from the U.S. Department of the Interior South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Program "Critical Ecosystems Studies Initiative" (administered through the National Park Service) and from the U.S. Geological Survey, Florida Caribbean Science Center. Additional funding for the "Atlas Tropic Level System Simulation" was also provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

(This abstract was taken from the Proceedings of the South Florida Restoration Science Forum Open File Report)

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