Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther by Craig Pittman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars A Readable Awful Account of Saving the Panther Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther (2020) by Craig Pittman is a vivid, absorbing, often appalling, and finally tentatively uplifting account of the history of the Florida panther. It’s readable. Pittman is a clear and user-friendly writer who explains difficult legal and scientific and academic concepts in easy to grasp language, introduces key figures with vivid physical descriptions so we see them in our mind’s eye, and tells a suspenseful (his)story of the amazing (still precarious) salvation of the panther in Florida despite incredible odds against it and the small number of intrepid people who tried to help it. Although it begins by covering the history of the views of and interactions with the panther from vanished Native American cultures (who respected and worshiped the cats as semi-divine spirits) through European explorers and settlers (who feared and hated them as spooky devils) and late 19th- and early- to mid-20th-century Americans (who persecuted and hunted them as pests and trophies), the book spends much more time with more recent Florida history, especially from the 1970s on. The book makes you admire (and pity) the panther as an awesome natural creature living in a rapidly dwindling habitat. It makes you loathe developers and politicians and government bureaucrats (the egregious “Fish and Wildlife Services”) and the lobbyists and “scientists” they hire and marvel that there’s any unpaved, pristine wilderness habitats for panthers or other wild predators and animals left in Florida (or the USA). The obscene development projects like an excrescent university and associated community or a Catholic utopian community blasphemously planted in the center of prime panther habitat! The idea that extinction is part of god’s plan or that Florida will be developed willy nilly! The way people move into new developments in what was panther territory and then complain when the panthers appear in “their” backyards to kill their cats or goats! The book relates uncomfortable facts like Democrats and Republicans alike both driving development in Florida, without caring about panther survival and habitat etc. Also demonstrates how reprehensibly weak the Fish and Wildlife service is against politicians and lobbyists etc. and how reluctant they are to do what they really should be doing in preserving wildlife and wilderness environments, in general and here, in particular, even after some flawed data they’d been relying on to justify passing development permits in prime panther habitats was debunked. A bitter irony of this story and probably many others concerned with endangered species and vanishing wilderness environments in America: Even when good people wanted the same good outcomes--the survival of the Florida Panther--they differed in how to do it, causing delays and disasters. And this doesn't take into account the venal “experts” who sold themselves to development companies. I learned a lot from reading the book, like different strategies for saving endangered large predator species: radio telemetry (catching, tranquilizing, and attaching radio collars to panthers), captive breeding programs (one of the last resorts for saving endangered species), and genetic augmentation (the last resort). Also the appalling ease with which developers routinely get their projects okayed by Fish and Wildlife. Also the Natural History Museum experts using flesh eating beetles to devour panther carcasses so that they can get clean bones to preserve. Also various quirky details Pittman relishes recounting about Floridian culture, like two different Big Foot type creatures and bizarre roadside attractions. Maybe in his desire to write an entertaining book, Pittman indulges in a few too many popular culture references: Star Trek, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Ten Commandments, the Hulk, the Avengers, Superman, Snidely Whiplash, Roger Staubach’s Hail Mary touchdown pass to Drew Pearson, Pepto Bismol, Farrah Fawcett feathered hair, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, etc. etc. E.g., “Dozens of Panther pelts... hung there in rows just as if they were in Cruella de Vil’s coat closet.” The audiobook reader Mike Chamberlain is fine; nothing fancy, just straightforward clear down to earth reading that made me think I was listening to Pittman. View all my reviews
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