贵濒辞谤颈诲补鈥檚 often make spectacular and attention-grabbing headlines,听but the state鈥檚 official animal, the panther, has the exact opposite disposition. These large felines are quiet, they never , and mostly would like to be left alone. Of course, that hasn鈥檛 happened since colonial settlers barged into the panthers鈥 southeastern U.S. habitat in the 18th century and hunted them mercilessly.
By the early 1960s, the Florida panther was driven nearly to extinction, with only around 25 panthers left in the state鈥檚 wilds. In 1992, a study predicted the species would disappear by 2016. But thanks to an urgent conservation effort, the Florida panthers survived; in fact, there are about 200听now. The push to save them is documented in , a new book from the Tampa Bay Times鈥 longtime environmental reporter .听
How did it happen? The answer is a decades-long (and, it must be said, very Floridian) conservation saga that features a striking cast of scrappy scientists and specialists听and their eventual, controversial decision to crossbreed the few remaining Florida panthers with other big cats. It鈥檚 a fascinating story, though Pittman is quick to acknowledge it鈥檚 not exactly a parable. 鈥淭his is a guide to what extraordinary efforts it takes to bring back just one subspecies鈥攐ne that鈥檚 particularly popular,鈥 the author writes, 鈥渁nd what unexpected costs such a decision brings.鈥
The central players include Roy McBride, a Texan hunter who became the go-to panther capturer for the state鈥檚 game commission; wildlife biologist Deb Jansen, who performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a panther early in the book; and Melody Roelke, a veterinarian who struggles to be heard while making critical discoveries about the panthers鈥 worsening condition. We follow them through a twisting series of events that reads sometimes like a mystery (when Roelke sleuths out that 90-degree kinks on some panthers鈥 tails indicate a shrinking gene pool, for example) and other times like a political drama.听
Pittman ably breaks down the complications of big-cat biology and听bureaucratic red tape听by writing the book mostly in scenes. He puts us directly in the swamps of Big Cypress Preserve, where the big cats lurk, and in tense stakeholder meetings, where scientists听and officials deliberate. Some of the most nail-biting material centers around the panthers鈥 shrinking gene pool, as the team figures out what鈥檚 going on and then searches for ways to revive the struggling population while also keeping the species legally protected.
It鈥檚 a long path to the eventual solution of crossbreeding. We learn about Lester and Wilford Piper, brothers who, in the 1930s, ran a zoo on the Tamiami Trail听in Everglades National Park听and introduced some non-Floridian panthers into the Everglades area. Biologists later discover that those Everglades panthers are healthier than their counterparts in places like Big Cypress (they don鈥檛 have the 90-degree tail kinks, for example).听
But only after years of frustrating attempts at captive breeding and other strategies did the scientists add non-native panthers to the picture. It was a dicey proposition for species conservation, because the hybrid cats may not have counted as Florida panthers anymore. But the experts鈥 desperation was palpable, and their last-straw measure seems to have worked; at the time of Cat Tale鈥檚 publication, the panthers鈥 future was finally looking up.
Cat Tale entertainingly lays out a stranger-than-fiction history with just enough hindsight. It鈥檚 not quite poetry: readers will need to overlook Pittman鈥檚 tendency toward dad jokes and unnecessary asides, like one that bafflingly explains the well-known idiom Hail Mary.听But these seem like a natural consequence of the author鈥檚 effort to inject humor and specificity into the book, and he is effective in making concepts like population bottleneck feel viscerally urgent. The hardest parts for me to overlook were the moments Cat Tale failed to treat its human subjects with the same care as the panthers鈥攎ost egregiously when one biologist dies by suicide听and is given little more than a few sentences of acknowledgment.听
Pittman鈥檚 book succeeds听as a rare,听decently feel-good conservation story. The book provides an up-close look at exactly how hard it is to bring a species back from the brink. In doing so, it strengthens readers鈥 conservation literacy听and听hopefully will make them听more likely to be able to听follow other species-recovery efforts鈥攁 useful skill when the path forward is anything but predictable.