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"Just slow down:" A wildlife vet on how to preserve Floride wildlife

WGCU | By Cary Barbor,

Cory Patterson

Published March 26, 2024 at 11:29 AM EDT

Dr. Hollis Stewart tends to a Florida panther.

Dr. Hollis Stewart is a wildlife veterinarian. She worked on the Florida Panther Project, to help repopulate the endangered cats.

“I was a veterinarian with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on the Florida Panther Project,” said Dr. Stewart. “Some of it was capturing cats, was clinical work. So we'd have a capture season in the cooler months. And the idea was to capture and collar female cats so that we can follow their offspring. Because there still seems to be about a one in three chance of a kitten of a panther kitten reaching adulthood. And we don't know why that is. There's also a novel neurologic syndrome that's going on called feline leukomyelopathy, FLM. So we're doing research on that as well. The goal of the whole project was that there were, you know, in the 1800s, early 1900s, there's just almost like eight cats or less in Florida. And so they brought in, they banned the hunting and brought in some Texas cougars. So they mated.”

These interventions have succeeded in increasing the Florida panther population slightly, to about 120-230 adult cats, according to the FWC. Still,as the human population and development grows, many Florida panthers are killed each year, often by cars.

Of the thousands of types of Florida wildlife, 88 Florida species are endangered or threatened,, in addition to the Florida Panther. Dr. Stewart has some suggestions of what people can do to help preserve the wildlife population in SWFL.

“I would say, get a ring camera, get a trail camera, because it makes you understand what's happening, and you're just in your backyard. And then maybe when you see it, you appreciate it more,” Dr. Stewart said.

“I see a lot of rat poison boxes out that I think people don't get that that rat eats that poison and then maybe a bobcat eats that rat and it kills the bobcat. There are so many straight long roads. Just slow down a little bit. I think some people feel like, ‘what can I do?’, but it's like all the little things people do will add up. But I would say the number one thing is, just slow down.”

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