Hello friends, it's the Environment Show and welcome.
The Florida Panther makes a comeback thanks to the Texas connection.
Biologists are experimenting with a breeding technique to bring back the Florida Panther
otherwise extinct in 25 years.
Also this time, putting up fences with Larry Sompke and Kent Brown asks Congress to help
save American Civil War battlefields, threatened by development.
Because history is the thing that gives a country the motivation to move in a thoughtful
manner into its future and where it has no respect for its past, it has a pretty dim future
to make.
The Environment Show, a national production, made possible by Heming's Motor News, the
National Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont and by the J.M.
The Kaplan Fund of New York, and this is Bruce Robertson.
Florida's Panthers may be on the prowl again.
The once plentiful and healthy symbol of Florida's wildlife thought to go completely extinct
within 25 years from human encroachment on the Panthers habitat as well as genetic problems
caused by inbreeding, these Panthers may be returning to North Florida.
As Jim Ormond reports, the success involves Texas Cougars.
When we think of wildlife in Florida, we often think of mighty alligators and spectacular
water birds.
More recently, however, public attention has shifted to the critically endangered Florida
Panther.
Some predict that unless we make a serious effort at conservation, the majestic cat may be completely
extinct in 25 years.
Tom Logan is chief of wildlife research at the State's Fish and Game Commission.
He explains that although many people are concerned about the Florida Panther, the perceptions
of others and encroachment are largely responsible for the problem.
Panthers in danger didn't and Florida for two reasons.
One is that it's a large predator and has for many, many years been persecuted.
Just due to people's fear of the danger that they perceive associated with animal, fear
for safety of livestock, even their own safety in earlier times.
But more than that, the problem that is most responsible for the Panther status is just
human occupation of the South Eastern United States and development of the South East to
make it more hospitable for people to live and make a living in.
And therefore they have changed the South East to suit people more and Panthers less,
which means lots of a great deal of habitat essential to support Panthers.
The habitat must be extensive and hospitable.
Individual male Panthers occupy home ranges of over 200 square miles, female occupy ranges
of all 70 to 80 up to 100 square miles each.
And these generally do not overlap very much.
These areas that are occupied by Panthers have to be large enough to support many Panthers
in order to have a population that functions properly.
They have to have a proper habitat for cover and travel and concealment, but also to support
the kind of food base that Panthers require.
Not only do Panthers require vast territory to roam for food and shelter, scientists
have discovered Panthers lack genetic diversity.
Scientists trace this problem to geographic isolation that may have occurred 200 years ago.
The stagnation of the gene pool has allowed biological defects to become more prevalent
in the Panther population.
The end-breeding process manifests in a lost genetic variation and therefore genetic
and physiological fitness.
The consequence is that as this process accelerates over many years, you have characteristics such
as heart murmurs and reproductive problems beginning to occur at a much more frequent
occurrence.
And all these characteristics are those that reduce the animal's fitness, its ability to
survive and its ability to reproduce.
It's the extinction process.
To combat this problem, Logan and others have proposed breeding the Panthers with their
closest relative, the Texas Cougar.
Texas Cougars and Florida Panthers are sub-species of the species Mountain Lion.
The Mountain Lion species has members throughout North America, South America, and Central
America.
While members of a sub-species may look differently due to regional adaptations, they are almost
identical genetically and can breed for the offspring.
Logan hopes that diversifying the gene pool will reverse the trend of inbreeding and lead
to healthier Panthers.
The proposed project in Florida will require scrupulous monitoring of each stage of the
interbreeding process.
The plan that we are developing, which has got to go through a number of public review
steps in order to meet National Environmental Policy Act requirements, is perhaps as early
as next winter during our winter field season with our Florida Panthers studies, actually
release up to six to eight individuals into the South Florida population.
These would be females that we would select out of population in the Western United States.
Radio instrument those females release them into some strategic locations within the South
Florida population.
And then monitor their survival, their recruitment into the population, and their reproductive
history in the population.
We'll know what their health is, what their genetic characteristics are, as they breed
in the South Florida population.
We'll also be able to monitor the kittens that they produce, their survival, their genetic
character, and eventually their recruitment as breeders in the population.
So this will be a living way of injecting lost genetic material into that population just
as though we were injecting it with a syringe.
What do you say to a purist argument somebody might make that, well, if you do that, you're
not going to have Florida Panthers anymore, you're going to have some kind of hybrid?
Well, to begin with, you can't have hybrids within a species.
The Florida Panthers is a subspecies of not-line, fieliskon color.
So hybrid is not even a part of this subject.
We're not going to be creating something that didn't formally exist either.
What we're going to be doing is working within genetics, a fieliskon color, and restoring
genetic parts back into the Florida Panthers as a subspecies of not-line that still exists
in the South Eastern United States.
So it's not a matter of creating something new or something different, something that didn't
ever exist.
It's a matter of reconstructing the Florida Panther by managing this genetic material back
into the population.
In addition to preservation of habitat and genetic restoration, concerned individuals
are also working on strategies of reintroduction of Panthers into North Florida.
Cougars are also being employed in this effort to test the viability of returning Panthers
into areas they currently do not inhabit.
The scientists hope that if the Cougars can flourish in new habitats, so will Panthers.
If such reintroduction strategies are successful, we could conceivably see the Panthers population
double.
Increasing numbers, according to Logan, is crucial to long-term survival.
What we have seen is that when there are enough animals in a population on territories,
they interrelated in such a way where they both looked for each other as well as avoid
each other, that they were pale and attracted at the same time and maintain a nucleus population.
As soon as she began to eliminate some of those key individuals and the adjacent animals
no longer there, the integrity of those home ranges begins to break down its seams and
their animals begin to wander.
Tom Logan, Bureau Chief of Wildlife Research for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish
Commission, and Chairman of the Technical Subcommittee for the Florida Panther Interagency
Committee.
He spoke to us from Tallahassee.
This is Jim Ormond.
Any time you talk fences, the Robert Frost poem comes to mind, good fences do make good
neighbors, one way or the other, the poem actually begins thus, something there is that doesn't
love a wall that wants it down.
Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener, has a fence that not only won't come down,
it will make even better neighbors for humans as well as animals.
That's what he says.
Come see, he says.
Go see, we will.
Hey Larry, how are you doing?
Bruce, hi, what's going on today?
Okay, what are you doing here, digging a post hole?
Yeah, I'm digging a little hole here because I'm just finishing up planting a living fence.
I've got a little area here, I've planted about six or eight mack orange bushes right on
the property line between my yard and my neighbor's yard.
Why have you chosen this orange?
It's a bush or a tree.
Well, it's called a mack orange bush and I've chosen this.
I've chosen to go with this for a couple of reasons.
One, rather than putting up a wooden fence or a metal fence or something like that to divide
the property, I wanted to put up a living fence so that I can provide habitat for birds
and the blossoms will bloom and the bees will come.
So it will help me attract wildlife and help make my yard more beautiful.
I can see what you're working with right now is basically like a seedling or a sapling
of a small tree.
What will the bush look like when it finally grows?
Well, a mack orange bush is a tall about maybe six to eight or ten feet tall depending
on how rangel and lanky you let it grow.
It's very bushy, it can be very dense, it gets very thick.
These are just little two foot high sprouts.
And actually I'm recycling this out of my friends yard who is a tree surgeon and he planted
a mack orange fence a couple years ago and now it grew so much he was able to dig out
a half a dozen of these for me and he tells me that it's going to grow up probably about
four or five feet over the next two or three years.
If we were to do this, any tips on actually planting them if they get so big do you have
to spread them out?
Spread them out, I've put these, most of these about, what does it look like about four
to five feet apart, you could plant them a little closer.
Right here I've got an electrical, some sort of electrical fence or what is this?
Electrical, look like the support to the telephone.
To the telephone pole.
Right, and I want to put one here so we can kind of hide this a little bit.
So the secret to planting these is to dig a hole that's slightly larger and slightly
deeper than the ball.
You know what the root ball is and dig that out and then mix the soil that comes out of
there with some compost.
You want some compost or some other sort of organic matter that you can put a little bit
of that back down into the hole down at the bottom because you want to make the soil nice
and loose so that the roots have room to spread out and really dig in and take over and
get this thing established.
You just simply turn the pot upside down.
The thing drops out into your hand, just place it down into the hole, start putting the
dirt back in a little bit at a time.
And then once you've got it once covered, push down on it real nice.
You want to get out any air pockets because if you leave air pockets in there and don't
push it all down, mice can get in there and chew up the roots.
You can have problems but it's really a pretty darn easy thing to do.
And then I've got nice compost right here on top and push it all down real nice.
There you have it.
And there you have it.
Now give it a watering.
That's one of the secrets.
This late summer, early August fall planting is a real good time because you tend to get
more rain.
But if you decide to plant next spring or next summer, you have to water it almost every
week just to make sure it gets water.
That's probably the biggest reason why things fail that you don't water them often enough.
So in what two, three years, I wouldn't be able to see you standing behind this moving
fence.
That's right and we'll have birds nesting in here and birds and bees and butterflies roaming
around.
To me, it'll be much more aesthetic, much more environmental and much more beautiful.
All right, Larry, get back to your living fence.
You got some more planted to do.
Thanks a lot.
See you next time.
Take care.
Larry Sompke, the environmental gardener, author of beautiful easy gardens.
His living fence will separate his from his neighbor's yard in Hollowville, New York.
This is Bruce Robertson.
In many battlefields of the American Civil War, troops are massing for yet another conflict.
However, unlike the first war, there are no armies, no cannon, no musket shot, no dusty
cavalry, no bugles or fight and drum.
The soldiers of today's conflict are private property owners and members of an advisory
commission to save the battlefields.
There are fifty sites considered crucial to the war that today face destruction from
development of one sort or another.
To save these sites, the commission has asked Congress to appropriate $70 million in emergency
money.
This is half of what the commission estimates it will cost to fix up these sites.
The other half of the $140 million total would be raised by the 28 states where these
battlefields are located.
In addition, the commission is asking Congress for a separate investment of $2.5 million
a year for seven years, this to be used to acquire sites now in private ownership.
Kent Brown, an attorney from Lexington, Kentucky and a member of the advisory commission, says
this is more than just another federal spending program.
It's a very sensitive thing, but it's something I think that every American, just like they
should be interested in preserving the wetlands and the environment generally,
this whole debate goes part and parcel with it because this is the quality of our life.
And part of quality of life is appreciating one's history, preserving it and protecting
the grounds where that history was played out.
In Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where civilizations have existed for thousands
of years, cathedrals and temples, a thousand or more years old, stand in the midst of modern
cities.
Brown says these older civilizations seem to be comfortable with their history.
The United States, though, has from its very early days, I think, developed a mentality
of go out there and get what you want, make your way.
And it's that sort of mentality I think that inhibits our stopping and thinking about who
we are and what we are and what happened before us.
We'd rather bulldoze it over, make our way and go on to the next project.
And it's somewhat unique in the American psyche.
And it's the one thing I think that we need to do the most work at educating.
And that is that those that is part of the American dream and a noble one, one that I applaud.
Nevertheless, we have got to stop and somehow re-assess some of that philosophy when it comes
face to face with our history.
Because we are about ready to lose the history we have.
And if we cannot take our children and grandchildren out to these sites, show them what happened.
Explain to them the numbers of losses in the types of commitments these people had, which,
by the way, gave us the very rights that the private property interests want to protect
here.
Then we will have a country with no basic direction to it.
And because history is the thing that gives a country the motivation to move in a thoughtful
manner into its future.
And where it has no respect for its past, it has a pretty dim future to me.
The problem facing these historical sites is the same one facing wetlands or national parks,
even the open space on the outskirts of Anytown, Yourtown or City, namely population expansion
and development interests.
Consider the situation in Franklin, Tennessee, where a battle was fought November 30th,
1864.
It was once rolling lands up to what was the Carter House and the Carter Gin House just
on the outskirts of town of the Columbia Turnpike.
And today it is almost as far as I can see a housing development.
This housing development is not of recent origin.
This occurred in the 1950s and 60s.
And when there was no great movement to protect battlefields.
And right now all you have left of the Franklin battlefield is the small Carter House and
maybe three or four acres around it.
And the McGavick House, which is on the fringe of the battlefield, but all of the rest
of the territory over which the attacks were made and the fighting occurred and certainly
some of the most horrific fighting of the Civil War is now completely gone.
One would never be able to take a youngster out there and point where troops came from
or how they fought because it's gone.
There were some 10,000 battles or armed skirmishes fought between 1861 and 1865.
Of these nearly 400 were principal battles of the war.
45 were a turning point in the fighting, either in that particular region or for the war
itself.
Just these 45 represent a lot of valuable real estate today, especially as much of it is
in the Virginia and Maryland region around Washington, DC.
In these areas, Brown says, a strategy developed by an association in Perriville, Kentucky
might be employed.
The battlefield in Perriville received $2.5 million through the Federal Iced Tea, the
Intermodal Surface Transportation Enhancement Act.
These monies will be used to appraise and purchase key elements of the Perriville battlefield
We are currently now appraising 13 parcels of property with property owners.
We have ruled those property owners into the foal by making virtually all of the members
of the association.
We have carried on a series of meetings, public meetings with them and other citizens of
the community to explain to them exactly what we're doing, that everybody is being appraised
at the same time.
And that, if you can, we'll do the best we can to get the best price, but there's also
a segment of community service here that we're looking for from all of you, that if you truly
want this kind of resource for your community, which would bring great deals of money to
Perriville, then there's going to have to be some degree of sacrifice.
In other words, you can't think that you can get the top dollar on it and we have to
sell them on that.
It takes an enormous amount of persuasion, but it does work.
Brown says both the federal and the state's tax codes also need some reworking to make
it more attractive to convey property through wills and such.
The key to any acquisition and long-term protection plan is to get willing sellers, otherwise
there will be no sale, no land protection, and nothing for future generations to experience.
Once as Brown, this applies to battlefields being lost, as well as to those being loved
to death, with all sorts of commercial development around.
Either system represents an encroachment on the hallowed ground.
As one park guide at Gettysburg once made the remark that he, one day was going to take
out a group of boy scouts and tell them that Pickett's division came across this field,
but had to withdraw to the McDonald's only to be repulsed again at the hard ease and then
retreat all the way to the Howard Johnson.
We can't have that, even though those are support type businesses.
They must be put up at a location where on some master plan they are useful, they can
prosper, but they're not obtrusive.
With such a plan in place, we might just satisfy, to borrow from Mr. Lincoln himself, most
of the people, most of the time.
If a battlefield is protected and preserved, if it has that type of sensitivity and its
planning, this can be for any given community, probably the largest and cleanest moneymaker
that they could ever hope for, and then sagging economies in rural areas around the country
where many of these battlefields are, this can be the single greatest boon to their economy.
But it's one that they've got to recognize it's going to take some civic responsibility
that may require them to have to give a little, and it's also going to take a heightened
awareness and a heightened sensitivity as to how you treat these fields once you get
them.
If you combine all that, it is absolutely magnificent for an economy of a local community
or a state.
He's a brilliant, competent, master's in brown, an attorney in Lexington, Kentucky,
and chair of the Gettysburg National Military Park Advisory Commission.
He also serves on the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, which recently made a multi-million
dollar recommendation to Congress for restoration and protection of many other key but rapidly
disappearing civil war battlefield sites.
This is Bruce Robertson.
And that's our report on the Environment Show this week.
Thanks much for joining us for a cassette copy of the program called 1-800-767-1929.
Ask for the Environment Show Program Number 189.
The Environment Show, a presentation of national productions solely responsible for its content.
Dr. Alan Shartock, executive producer, this is Bruce Robertson.
The Environment Show made possible by the J.M. Kaplan Fund of New York and by Heming's
Motor News, the national Bible of the Old Car Hobby, monthly from Bennington, Vermont.
