swamp hunter
Senior Member
As for the Texas cats, there were 8 females transplanted. That is it. They were of a subspecies closest genetically to the Florida panther. There was always genetic interchange between the Florida panther and the Eastern cougar until the eastern cougar was extinct. You read the old writings from back in the early 20th century about the gladesmen, there just were not many deer there...before the ditching and draining and canals and the diking of the bit O, there just were not many deer....that was not prime habitat, deer can not live off of saw grass, wire grass and the subtropical forbs. The growth of agriculture and drying of much of the everglades out is what led to there being a decent deer population. Keep in mind, this deer population started to explode while there were still plenty of panthers in the area. They were responding to the changing environment. Ecosystems are delicate and the slightest little change has a ripple effect that can at times seem astronomical. We know cats eat deer, we also know from the study of the cats they tested in north Florida that they ate more raccoons, possums and smaller game than they did deer. We know the pythons have pretty much wiped out that population in the everglades, we also know that pythons eat deer....Well, we also know that panthers have a rather large home range, with a males well exceeding 100 square miles. We know that panthers do not allow competing panthers in their home range. We know that panthers kill trespassing panthers. Now here is the clincher. We know you can find more large pythons in one male panther's home range than there are panthers in Florida. And we also know due to a recent publication that one python was found with 3 deer in its stomach.....so, we know that a python can eat a number of south Florida deer a year. What does this tell me....if any one animal is driving the crash in south Florida deer, it is the python....even when it is not eating deer, why? Because it is wiping out all other primary components of the panther's diet. If that is all they were doing....eating all the meso-prey....that would be enough to increase predation on deer...but, they are ALSO eating deer. You want to help the deer? Hunt down and kill every python you can find. There is a small market for python hides...grow that market. You could create a whole new generation of gladesmen who make their living off of python hides. Oh yeah, one last thing.....the higher water, concentrates the deer on the hammocks...which also makes them easier prey for the pythons. The pythons do not have natural predators in South Florida to limit their growth, sure some birds will eat juvenile pythons, and gators will eat a medium sized python...maybe even a large one...but we also know the pythons prey on gators too....you have an environment in South Florida that is in stress due to its alterations over the last 100 or so years. It is in stress due to unregulated urban and suburban sprawl. It is in stress due to lacks of water at time and exclusion of fire at times. It is in stress due to nitrates and phosphates being feed into the system disrupting the aquatic plant diversity. You have a system that is in stress due to invasive plants that out compete the native plants and you are creating monocultures of Australian pines, Brazilian pepper, etc...and they you throw in invasive super predators, the pythons. It is a wonder you have any deer left quiet frankly. They are putting more water into the everglades, more annually than has been there for decades, this is good, but it is also effecting the deer, it is limiting their population, bringing it back to its levels of old....plus all the other problems discussed above. The flood, drought and fire cycle is what is natural for the everglades...it has been altered too much. Maybe it is getting restored little by little, it needs to be, Florida Bay is shot out....That area was home to the panther long before any humans moved there....hopefully it will be home for them for ever....and hopefully they will expand their territory.
Well Said Billcollector...Well said.