The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) announces that it had a successful enrollment phase for a program that will pay landowners who Florida panther supporting habitats.
The initiative is known as the Florida Panther Payment for Ecosystem Services Pilot Program. It rewards private landowners with a payment per acre of land that supports panther conservation in Florida,, according to FWC.
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are payments to farmers or landowners who have agreed to take certain actions to manage their land or watersheds to provide an ecological service,, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development.
The first year of the panther program will pay out a total of $519,012 to enrolled landowners.
There were 69 applications for the program, representing over 172,000 acres across 14 counties.
From all applications, 15 were chosen, totaling 40,635 acres of valuable panther habitat, to be enrolled, reported the FWC.
"Florida's private landowners are essential for conservation in this state. Private lands provide healthy wildlife habitat and connect conservation lands across the landscape. Our landowners' willingness to support panthers on their properties makes a tangible difference for this critically endangered species," said Jennifer Goff, Deputy Director of the FWC's Division of Habitat and Species Conservation.
The FWC will continue working with the landowners to monitor the program's performance and potentially have pictures submitted of panther sightings. The submitted images could qualify for further bonus payments.
The Florida panther is one of only two wild cat species native to Florida (the other being the bobcat), with the panther's primary habitat ranging from the south of Orlando to the grand part of southwestern Florida.
The panther has been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1967, and with only around 120-230 adult panthers currently in the wild, according to the FWC.
Going back to the 1800s, the decline of the population was catalyzed by people's view of the panther as a "threat to livestock and game animals," stated The Nature Conservancy. Officials then put a $5 bounty per panther killed on all counties in Florida, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation.
By the 1950s, they were thought to be extinct, says The Nature Conservancy.
A paper by the FWC shows a record of panther populations throughout the years, showing that the number of counted individuals in 1981 was below 20.
By 2025, population numbers will have steadily increased since then, as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and FWC continue to work on the species' conservation.