The state of Florida is known throughout the country for a lot of different things. It’s the retirement capital of the United States, with gorgeous beaches that line both the East and West Coasts. People have often been drawn by the fact that there’s no state income tax, the notable theme parks for family vacations, and the beautiful weather almost all year round. In the last few years, the “Sunshine State” has seen an influx in the number of people moving there from all around the US, as well as internationally. You can drive anywhere from The Villages, a massive retirement community just north of Orlando, all the way down to the Everglades. The land is being bought up, and homes and businesses are being built over the habitats of the wildlife that Florida is known for. This is the backdrop to director Eric Bendick’s documentary, Path of the Panther: a National Geographic-backed film about the world of the famous Florida panther and the race against time to save the land it calls home.
The film has a heavy and impactful opening, with police and highway patrol encountering a deceased panther on the side of a highway in Southwest Florida. Photographer and native Floridian, Carlton Ward Jr. hovers over the scene, taking photos of the deceased animal. He’s clearly moved by this incident as someone who has a lot of love for the area that he grew up around. The sight of even a deceased panther is rare, as it is another loss to an animal species that has now been labeled under the Endangered Species Act. What follows is a hopeful moment. Ward ventures out into the Everglades, setting up cameras in places, hoping to catch a flicker of something special. What he ends up getting is a shot of a tail that belongs to a Florida panther. It has become so rare to catch one in the wild, and now he has a bit of hope. With this tiny bit of evidence, Ward and a team of biologists and filmmakers set out to protect this animal from looming extinction.
The panther caught in the photo gets the name Babs, due to the location they saw her roaming at, the Babcock Ranch State Preserve. From there on, we follow Babs’ journey. She is the first Panther to be seen north of the Caloosahatchee River since the 1970s. As camera traps catch more pictures of her trail, Ward and his team discover something else: a male panther is in pursuit of her scent, potentially meaning a mate. Ultimately, this indicates a new sense of hope for the creation of more of these animals to live on.
Outside of the study of an animal and its habitat, Path of the Panther also brings a touching backstory to the humans who hold a strong kinship to the land that they grew up on. Carlton Ward Jr. also has segments in the film with others local to the land who understand the deep connection and threats that loom now. The first is early on, when he goes out on a boat to a tree island with an Indigenous woman who speaks about the close kinship her ancestors shared with the land. When they passed on, their ashes were spread across certain places in the Everglades so that they always remained close to the earth and the places they knew. Another pivotal moment that really shows you what’s at stake with the land is when Ward goes horseback riding with a rancher, and not too far in the distance are rows of new homes being built.
While we follow the journey of the panther in the film. We are also given a look at the politics of economic growth in Florida. Many areas in the state have grown and grown after 2020, due to tourism skyrocketing and a growth in people moving there for a new start. More and more highways and roads are being built to aid all of the development. With these roads and cookie-cutter homes being built seemingly overnight, it puts a dent in the land a panther can cover. Since this development, the primary cause of death for the panther is being hit by a car, hence the opening minutes of the film. Ward and his team banded together to propose the idea of corridors and pathways for the panther; it is with these pathways that the animal can move across land without the possibility of having to cross highways or cross through residential development. However, a conflict arises.Towards the third act of the film, The Florida Department of Transportation has proposed the idea of building a toll road that would go right through the corridor. The road would be right in the middle of the panthers’ territory, starting in central Florida and moving down to the northern parts of the Everglades.
Path of the Panther may make people nervous to click play on it due to the idea of it being about wildlife in danger, but it doesn’t end with despair or guilt for its viewer. Rather, the film shows signs of a brighter future. The film shows us that Babs has given birth to two little kittens that follow her wherever she goes. Ward sits and watches the video footage of the mother and her two little ones, and wonders if one or both of them are female in hopes that this can further the growth of the endangered species. Although there are still elements of danger for the panther from what has already been done in the development that surrounds them, there is good news. In 2021, Gov. Ron Desantis signed the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act: a law that protects nearly 10 million acres of land in the state, making it safer for wildlife to move freely in the Everglades.
With a documentary that takes place in a state that is now known to cause controversial political movements, internet memes, and “Florida Man” stories, Path of the Panther makes you forget all those strange depictions for 90 minutes. What it ends up doing instead is make you admire the state’s beauty, which is often hidden in plain sight. Land like this isn’t found anywhere else in America. The beautiful cinematography of the film backs it up with not just footage of the panthers but also other wildlife like black bears roaming a river in a peaceful manner and gigantic alligators paddling along to their next sunbathing spot. After taking nearly six years to make, the film made the rounds at multiple screenings in Florida in early 2023. It got Leonardo Dicaprio to toss his name into the hat of this cause as the film’s executive producer, and it now arrives on streaming platforms like Hulu and Disney+. Yet with an optimistic ending, the filmmakers let us know that the fight isn’t over. This all could go away and change in an instant. So right as the film wraps up, it leaves us with a simple sentence on screen: “The next chapter is up to us.”
