Carlton Ward, Jr. is obsessed with the Florida panther, but he has enough love in his heart for all of Florida. And Tampa Bay has a legit connection to the man: He lived in Belleair Bluffs, and attended Largo High and Berkeley Prep. (Psst, Largo High: Jack Davis went there, too — what the hell are you teaching these kids that they can’t get enough of Florida’s great outdoors, and can you bottle it for all the other schools?) In advance of his talk in Tampa, he took an hour out of his schedule to talk to CL.
Tell us about your ties to Florida’s environment.
I grew up in Clearwater; I had one foot in the suburbs and one foot in the heartland, because I have a lot of cousins who are full-time cattle ranchers and a long family heritage in interior Florida, and we have a family ranch ourselves.
I was always drawn to nature and whether that was done on the coast, in Clearwater, or [they were] experiences in wild places, hunting and fishing and exploring interior Florida growing up. When I went away to college, I started studying biology and anthropology and became interested in conservation.
And then I was working a lot in Central Africa with the Smithsonian and using photography to raise awareness for conservation issues there. But every time I got on an airplane and left Florida for two or three months and came back, there was a new subdivision or golf course on what used to be a cattle ranch, and I started to feel like I was turning my back on my own state. So that led to a real change in the focus of my career, and [in] 2004 I moved from Washington DC and came back to focus on Florida full-time.
The cattle ranches and the unseen and overlooked parts of our natural heritage that were quietly disappearing to the tune of 150,000 acres a year — a loss of habitat and large wild spaces on par with any of the challenges facing Africa or India or Indonesia or the Amazon or anywhere else. But it’s right here, hidden in plain sight.
I came home [from college] and the first places I photographed were the barrier islands: Caladesi Island, Anclote Key, Honeymoon Island — these were the last remnants of wild nature that we had left in Pinellas County, because we developed literally from the gulf to the bay — everything except a few barrier islands that were less convenient to put houses on (at that time). I took out the boat my brother and I have had since we were kids, and photographed nature. Even then, it wasn’t like I had to go to the Everglades to photograph something people didn’t know was there. I did an assignment for a local architect who owned a barrier island out next to Anclote Key; I brought the pictures back and he said, “Wow these pictures seem so exotic, like this is Africa or something.” This is coming from a guy who lived there and actually owned the island. Nature can be kind of hidden under our noses — even when we do see it every day, we don’t always necessarily see it.
Why is it that the panther caught your attention instead of, say the scrub jay or the indigo snake?
I’ve photographed — and am interested in — all of Florida’s wildlife, but the panther is really an emblem of wild Florida. They’re kind of the ultimate ambassador or the Florida Wildlife Corridor, and communicating the idea that conservation cannot be achieved one individual property at a time, in isolation, but rather you have to protect a whole functional network of connected land. That’s important for water, it’s important for the birds and the small wildlife species, but it’s absolutely essential for wide-ranging wildlife, like the Florida black bear or the Florida panther. The other reason the panther is such an important symbol, is that the panther — puma — are the last big cats surviving in the eastern United States.
My path with National Geographic has come from the conservation side and evolved into storytelling. I’ve had four grants from the National Geographic Society. The first two were for my role in each of the Florida Wildlife Corridor expeditions... then in 2016 I got a grant from the Expeditions Council to work on the Path of the Panther project. In 2017 I got a storytelling grant to focus on the Path of the Panther project.
In November of 2016, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced they had verification of the first female Florida panther north of the Caloosahatchee River since 1973. Until that time, the known breeding population of the Florida panther had been stuck in very southern tip of Florida. [Before that] there was no pathway to expand their territory. Male Florida panthers have been moving throughout peninsular Florida for decades; there was one panther that was shot by a hunter not that far from Atlanta, Georgia a few years ago.
The number one cause of death for panthers is highway mortality, to the tune of 30-plus a year, but the number two cause of death is panthers killing panthers over defending territory.
It’s a moment of great hope, because now the breeding range of the Florida panther [has expanded]. By January, I was getting some unprecedented photographs of that female that really embodied the hope of her species, because she had been the first on record to swim across this quarter-mile wide river and set up this territory. If she is able to successfully breed, that’s the next step for Florida panther recovery. Meanwhile it’s a real race against time, because the Florida panther is doing its part and the conservationists are doing their part, but now it’s up to the rest of us to support the land protection programs and policies that will give the panther any hope of further recovery.
But that moment of a female panther showing up north of the river... shows that we still have a chance to save the panther and, more importantly, the panther will show us what we need to do to save ourselves.
Wild Florida: Hidden in Plain Sight with Carlton Ward, Jr.
Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 WC MacInnes Place, Tampa | Feb. 26: 7 p.m. | $45-$55 | 813-229-STAR | strazcenter.org