Craig Pittman of the St. Pete Times had a series of articles out over the weekend exposing what seemed to be corruption and collusion of government officials and so called experts regarding the fate of Florida's state animal and it is truly sickening.

You might remember Pittman's award winning series Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands. Both should be required reading for not only ever Floridian voter but every elected official that ever has a vote on land use. His recent exposé on the panthers points out that we only have about 100 remaining panthers and lack of habitat has the state animal facing almost certain extinction. They have faced it before when a genetic flaw due to longtime low numbers in the population forced inbreeding which was helped by bringing in cougars from Texas. The numbers are up (if you want to call 80-100 cats in total up) but the lack of critical habitat is now the biggest flaw in the big cat's survival plan. Sure the Florida Panther is protected but evidently that just means you can't kill one directly. There are no rules about killing them slowly by destroying their natural habitat with rooftops (or running over them with cars). Developer initiated and politician blessed sprawl is the biggest threat to the Florida Panther and right now that sprawl is winning. As Pitmann's first article points out:

• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which spends more than $1.2 million a year on panther protection, has not blocked a single development that altered panther habitat. Former agency employees say every time they tried, "we were told that, politically, it would be a disaster," said Linda Ferrell, who retired from the agency in 2005.

Later the article revealed the massive volume of habitat approved for development even when the numbers of panthers had dipped as low as 30.

federal officials granted permits that converted panther habitat into a new university, new roads and subdivisions — including one ironically called the Habitat. Since the Texas cougar experiment began, the wildlife service has said yes to 113 projects that if built would wipe out more than 42,000 acres of panther habitat.

As Pittman's articles explain, female panthers need 29,000 acres and males need 62,000 acres so saving enough habitat is the key to saving the species. And the remaining land in Southwest Florida where the panther roams is quickly being eaten up by development. The article also describes some of those recent developments:

Most of the projects the Fish and Wildlife Service has approved since 1995 are in Collier County. The largest is the new town of Ave Maria, which in 2005 was given permission to destroy 5,027 acres of habitat that had been 9 miles from the nearest suburb.

Ave Maria is a development that includes a Catholic University which sits in the middle of critical panther habitat. I couldn't help but wonder WWJD? I bet he would have opted to save the big cats instead of approving sprawl….. even it it was religious sprawl.

This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2010.