Toward a panther-centered view of the forests of South Florida

Anthropogenic habitat degradation and loss is the single largest threat to the endangered Florida panther, Puma concolor coryi. Conservation of the su bspecies must be undertaken on the scale of the entire landscape. Thus, a v iew of the forested landscape of South Florida must be developed that is me aningful with reference to the panther. We approach this problem by analyzi ng the spatial interactions of panthers and forests at multiple scales. We apply tools derived from fractal geometry to the analysis of 12 years of te lemetry observations of panthers and remotely sensed forest cover imagery. A fractal characterization extends conventional scale-dependent measures of forest density and relates intuitively to panther ecology. To move toward a panther-centered view of the forests of South Florida, we adopt a scale-d ependent notion of association and compare the density of forest cover asso ciated with panther locations to that of the forest at large. Panthers inte ract with forest cover over a wide range of scales, consistently selecting denser than average forest areas. We discuss landscape-scale management of the panther in light of our findings and propose a protocol for mapping for est cover with reference to the panther at multiple scales as a mangement t ool for habitat assessment.