We’ve been hearing the rumors for years – someone spotted an elusive Florida panther in Hillsborough County, far north of their typical range in the Everglades. Hillsborough County Environmental Lands Division Manager Ross Dickerson recalls taking a cast from a footprint in Wolf Branch Creek Nature Preserve in 2003 that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission identified as “the biggest bobcat we’ve ever seen.” Imagine his surprise when he googled Florida Panther Sightings and found seven confirmed sightings in Hillsborough County, beginning with a 2018 sighting in the Alafia River corridor. “These are verified sightings,” he stresses. “The experts have seen images or footprints that they confirm as a panther.”
To a large degree, the panthers were sighted in or near properties purchased through the County’s Jan K. Platt Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program (ELAPP), he said. As much as possible when purchasing from willing sellers, those properties align with priority corridors identified in the analysis conducted by the University of Florida’s Center for Landscape Conservation Planning for Hillsborough County, the same team that developed the Florida Ecological Greenway Network (FEGN) that identifies the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
Panthers also have been verified at two more properties in Hillsborough, including this one shown in a rare daylight video shot on a ranch in the eastern part of the county, Dickerson said. One of those properties was purchased in 2022, and the county is negotiating with the owner of another.
State funding from the legislation signed earlier this month allocating income from the Seminole Tribe’s gambling initiatives to purchase lands in the Florida Wildlife Corridor will probably not impact Hillsborough land purchases, he notes. “We’re just outside what has been identified as the priority wildlife corridor,” Dickerson said. “One passes just east of us, though, running through parts of Polk and Pasco counties to reach the Green Swamp.”However, ELAPP has approximately $31 million available to buy those lands now, with an additional $12.5 million available for bonding following voter approval of a 2009 referendum, he said. Purchasing those will be critical for Hillsborough, even if they aren’t an official part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
But not all the sightings are positive: one panther found near Alderman’s Ford Nature Preserve in Plant City was dead, killed by an automobile, the largest danger to panthers in Florida. “We don’t want to entice them to come here, and then have them hit by a car,” Dickerson said.