AR-News: (US FL) Officials work to protect Florida panthers from disease

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

By ERIC STAATS, emstaats at naplesnews.com
March 15, 2004 
The first sign of trouble for the Florida panther population came in November 
2002. 
Researchers, conducting routine checkups on the endangered cats, captured a 
female panther north of the Collier-Hendry line in the Okaloacoochee Slough 
Wildlife Management Area. 
The checkup found a surprise: a case of feline leukemia in the wild panther 
population. 
The panther showed no outward signs of the disease when it was captured, but 
it died five months later from an overwhelming bacterial infection. 
That case was followed by a second one in January 2003, then two more during 
the 2004 capture season. One of those three panthers has died from the 
disease, a second was killed in a fight with another panther. The third still is 
roaming the Okaloacoochee Slough. 

full story:

http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/news/article/0,2071,NPDN_14940_2729877,00.html 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040315/dd6da30e/attachment.html