Florida Public Track Panthers With GPS Coordinates

We’ve reported many stories about wildlife conservation efforts being assisted by GPS technology. This particular story is a little different. Instead of an elaborate, professional study using GPS tracking collars, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee (FWC) is getting the public’s help to monitor endangered Panthers in the area. They have established a website at www.FloridaPanthernet.org, where people are asked to submit sightings and photos of panthers and their tracks.

The effort has been going strong for about a year now, and in that time, there have been 790 reports of panther sighting all over the state. Nature enthusiasts can go onto the website to find photos and suggestions on spotting panthers in the area. The more information submitted, the better the chances of being able to confirm or deny the sighting. Citizens submit a summary of what they saw, along with the GPS location of their spotting. Ideally, a photo is also submitted. Unfortunately, panthers are elusive creatures and only about 12 percent of submissions included a photo.

Many modern hikers and wildlife aficionados will carry a GPS device of some kind with them. They serve the very practical purpose of preventing the hikers from getting lost on the trail. In case of emergency, the GPS location information can be given to 911 dispatchers so your rescue is quick and efficient. Some hikers rely on the GPS navigation abilities of their smartphones, which have an added bonus of coming with a camera. If the photos are taken with a smartphone, the image might suffer a little, but there are quite a few benefits. Smartphones have built-in GPS technology and images are encoded with the GPS data.

The majority of photos submitted were confirmed panther sightings. The most common animals mistaken for panthers are bobcats, coyotes, foxes, dogs, domesticated cats and even a monkey. There were also quite a few bobcat tracks mistaken for panther tracks, which are about three times the size of a bobcat paw print.

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Florida Public Track Panthers With GPS Coordinates