The population of the Florida panther once dwindled to below two dozen, but it has since rebounded to more than 200. Photographer Carlton Ward Jr. has made it his mission to photograph their progress.

Transcript

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

The Florida panther, once nearly extinct - the big cats now number more than 200. Steve Newborn of member station WUSF met up with a photographer and a panther biologist who've been documenting their plight and their progress.

STEVE NEWBORN, BYLINE: The path to find the panther begins at a narrow ribbon of preserved land just west of Lake Okeechobee.

(SOUNDBITE OF GATE OPENING)

NEWBORN: Brian Kelly, a panther biologist for the state of Florida, opens a creaking gate as trucks rumble along U.S. Highway 27. Just a few steps away is a different world of towering oaks and cypress heads. For decades, this was the edge of panther country.

BRIAN KELLY: Fisheating Creek wildlife management area. This is the current northern frontier of the panther breeding range. So we've gotten female panther activity here recently, which is big news for panthers north of the Caloosahatchee River.

NEWBORN: As he walks down a dirt path, Kelly bends down to unlock a camouflage camera bolted to a cypress tree.

KELLY: Rabbit, possum, humans, hikers, squirrel, law enforcement, deer, deer.

NEWBORN: No panthers?

KELLY: No panthers. No.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Only five days.

KELLY: Yeah, only five days. The last time I checked, it had a panther. This particular camera usually will get a panther once a month.

NEWBORN: For the first time in 43 years, a female panther was spotted near this spot north of the Caloosahatchee River. Kelly and others believe this progress won't matter if they can't find money to preserve a continuous path for the big cats to migrate. So far this year, nine have died on the roads. That's where nature photographer Carlton Ward Jr. comes in.

(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE ROARING)

NEWBORN: Traffic roars overhead as Ward climbs under state Road 80, just north of the Everglades. He inspects an infrared camera that produced one of the most striking images used in a recent National Geographic article - a lone cat walking under the overpass, its stealthy profile reflected in a still creek.

CARLTON WARD JR: To capture an image of a panther walking through some of these places might happen every one or two months. But then to get it with some level of daylight that gives that depth and beauty to the surrounding landscape, that only happens a few times a year.

NEWBORN: This isn't the first time he's been here. In 2012, Ward led the first of 2 thousand-mile treks across Florida to publicize the need to preserve wildlife corridors, so the Panthers can keep moving north.

WARD: Now, to look at that from the panthers' perspectives, with the breeding population of panthers still isolated to the southern portion of our state, that wildlife corridor that we've experienced is literally the lifeline for the panther to recover and reclaim its historic territory further to the north.

NEWBORN: Its historic territory used to be the entire Southeast U.S., but they were hunted so relentlessly that by the 1970s, only a handful were left in the swamps near the Everglades. Through conservation and the relocation of eight female pumas from West Texas, what had once been fewer than 20 panthers is now more than 200. Kelly was a safari guide in South Africa who also went on fossil digs. He says tracking and photographing these panthers gives people clues, just like fossils.

KELLY: How do you figure out what kind of animals were walking around the Earth a million years ago, 5 million years ago? And this is, what were animals doing here yesterday or last week? That fascinates me.

NEWBORN: There is more hope. Florida lawmakers have vowed to use $300 million in federal stimulus money, which may be used to conserve land or build highway underpasses along wildlife migration corridors. For NPR News, I'm Steve Newborn near the Everglades in Florida. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.