HENDRY COUNTY, Fla. — The Florida panther once roamed the entire southeastern United States. Today, a small pocket of South Florida is all that remains of its habitat east of the Mississippi River.
Now, a team of wildlife filmmakers is using photography to fight for the big cat's survival.
Tampa Bay 28 reporter Michael Paluska trekked deep into panther territory with the team from the fStop Foundation. The non-profit is dedicated to tracking the panther and putting up trail cameras to give viewers a secret glimpse into their everyday lives.
On our first stop in the Greater Ok Slough Ecosystem, we saw footprints in the soft sugar sand of a massive male panther.
“This is the first time I’ve seen panther tracks in the wild,” Paluska said with excitement.
“It’s a panther stronghold,” wildlife biologist Sean McHugh said with a smile.
"The panther got shoved into South Florida because of the inaccessibility of it before roads were here. The Everglades, areas like this, and the Okeechobee Slough ecosystem were wild enough for it to escape that persecution from humans," McHugh said.
Nearly hunted to extinction, the Florida panther is critically endangered. At one point, only 10 to 20 remained in the wild. Today, an estimated 120 to 230 panthers roam South Florida.
The nonprofit is working to change the panther's fate — deploying trail cameras across the state to document the animals and inspire public support for their protection. Father and son William and Max Freund, along with McHugh, make up the core of the team.
Their method is methodical: scout the terrain, find tracks, position cameras, and wait.
The payoff comes when the team retrieves the cameras. Scrolling through hundreds of images, William Freund spotted something remarkable.
"Got 269 with her kitten walking right by the camera — nice," William Freund said while scrubbing through the SD card.
For Max Freund, those moments carry weight far beyond the excitement of a single capture.
"I think to be able to show people an animal that we've never seen. I've personally never seen a panther, and we see them in the cameras, and we know that they're around, and they're thriving, and they have their challenges, but to be able to show people and let them experience something they'll never see is really important," Max Freund said.
McHugh said protecting enough land is the key to the panther's future.
"These are the types of places that save the panther. If you have enough space, they will reproduce, and from there the population can continue to sustain itself."
But wild places are disappearing fast. A joint study by 1000 Friends of Florida and the University of Florida estimates 190 acres of land could be lost per day to development over the next 50 years.
"It goes from sort of virgin land to some kind of agricultural use, whether it's ranching or citrus or growing tomatoes, and then eventually that becomes the last, what we call the last crop in Florida, which is rooftops," William Freund said.
The panther is not the only species at stake. McHugh said the big cat serves as an umbrella for an entire ecosystem — one that includes, bears, bobcats, alligators, snakes, and countless other species.
"People have a tendency to focus on the panther. It is an umbrella species. It's a flagship species of fStop. There are so many other important species too, and it's all part of the same ecosystem."
Even after years of work, the team said the thrill of finding a panther on camera never fades.
"No, no, no, you never know. And that video starts playing, you just get excited, and you can't wait to share it with everyone else," Max Freund said.
The hope is that 250 years from now, these photographs will not be the last witness of Florida panthers roaming the wild.
"The key for us at fStop is the storytelling part of it. The old saying of you're going to protect what you love, and you're going to love what you understand, and so if we can tell the stories of these absolutely incredible resilient animals, we have a chance to make it happen," William Freund said.
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