Carlton Ward Jr Releases The National Geographic Book Path Of The Panther

With 1,000 new residents moving to Florida every day, and more than 100,000 acres of habitat lost to development each year, the window to save the natural habitat of Florida’s Panthers is closing quickly. The panther is the state animal of Florida, the last big cat surviving east of the Mississippi River, an emblem of the Endangered Species Act. A subspecies of the puma, the panther was driven to extinction throughout the rest of its range in the Eastern United States, except for a small remnant population that persisted in Florida’s Everglades. Panther numbers had dwindled to fewer than 20 individuals by the 1980s, but heroic conservation efforts have helped panthers come back to nearly 200 today. The biggest obstacle for the panther’s continued recovery is access to enough of its historic territory throughout Florida and beyond. Rising north out of the Everglades, the tale of the Florida panther has grown from the unlikely survival of a rare cat to a story of hope for all of wild Florida. PATH OF THE PANTHER is now a call to action to recognize and protect the Florida Wildlife Corridor- a network of public and private and that connects the panther’s current range in south Florida to suitable habitat throughout the state of Florida and adjoining states. The Florida Wildlife Corridor is the panther’s path to recovery and a western-scale conservation opportunity that remains largely hidden in the east. It is now a Last Wild Places partnership with the National Geographic Society. With 27 percent of Florida already protected as public land, this project aims to inspire the additional one million acres of conservation needed over the next decade so that Florida can be a leader in the goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030.