Photo by carltonward / This photo is from my Florida panther story coming in the April issue of National Geographic magazine. A female Florida panther and her three kittens navigate Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in southwest Florida. Although bigger than 20 square miles, this sanctuary alone is far too small to support even one adult male panther, which needs up to 200 square miles to roam. But conserving adjacent agricultural lands can keep the sanctuary connected to larger conservation lands further inland. The Florida panther, with a breeding population that has been isolated to the southern tip of Florida, is the last subspecies of puma surviving in the eastern United States. The panther is now back from the brink of extinction, from fewer than 20 panthers to nearly 200 today. But it will not reach sustainable numbers without access to more of its historic territory throughout Florida and the southeast. Now there is a race to conserve enough land in the Florida Wildlife Cor...