Florida Panther

The Florida Panther, Florida's state animal, is on the endangered species list. It is the last surviving subspecies of puma in the Eastern United States, and it is estimated that there are fewer than 100 adults left in the only known breeding population. Historically these big cats ranged across the southeastern United States including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and parts of Tennessee and South Carolina. Now, the breeding population is found only in the southern tip of Florida.

Panthers can live in many types of habitat, including forests, prairies and swamps. Panthers are mostly active between dusk and dawn, and rest during the heat of the day. They are solitary and territorial animals that will travel hundreds of miles within their home range. Males have a home range of 200 square miles and females about a third of that.

Paul Winterman took photographs of this beautiful cat at the Bear Creek Feline Center, a cat refuge in Florida.

Black Bear

The black bear is the smallest of the three bear species in North America. Eastern populations of this species are usually a uniform black color, while their Western cousins will often have a brown or even blonde component to their coat coloring. Black bears have short, non-retractable claws that give them an excellent tree-climbing ability.

While the black bear population is healthy in many parts of the United States, the Louisiana, Florida subspecies, and those in eastern Texas and southern Mississippi are threatened. Historically, black bears occupied nearly all of the forested regions of North America, but in the United States they are now restricted to tless densely populated areas.  In Canada, they still roam most of their historic range, except for the intensively farmed areas of the central Plains.

Paul Winterman took this photograph of a black bear in Maine.

Bison

Commonly called the buffalo, which is actually a different species not found in North America, the bison is the largest land mammal in North America. In the United States the Plains Bison once roamed across much of the land, while in northern Canada the Wood Bison held sway. Prior to the slaughter of the Plains Bison in the 1800s, they numbered approximately 20-30 million. By 1889 that number had been reduced to 1,091. Today, approximately 500,000 bison live across North America, but most those are not pure bison.  They have been cross-bred with cattle and now are principally raised as livestock on ranches. Fewer than 30,000 bison are in conservation herds, and fewer than 5,000 are free-ranging and disease-free. Yellowstone National Park has the largest population of free-roaming plains bison at about 4,000.

This 1998 photograph of Plains bison was taken by Paul Winterman in Wyoming.