TALLAHASSEE, Florida \u2014 Environmental advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday against several federal agencies over their handling of a large development project in South Florida \u2014 one which the groups argue could significantly harm the endangered Florida panther.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit argues that<\/a> the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers violated the Endangered Species Act when they authorized a 10,264-acre residential and commercial development project known as Rural Lands West.<\/p>\n The project would be built in Collier County in prime habitat for the panther. The environmental groups, which include the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and South Florida Wildlands Association, argue thousands of acres of panther habitat would be destroyed by the Rural Lands West project. The Florida panther has already suffered significant habitat loss, with FWS estimating that no more than 230<\/a> adult panthers remain.<\/p>\n \u201cOur hope is that this lawsuit will finally determine how much development is too much for the Florida panther,\u201d South Florida Wildlands Association Executive Director Matthew Schwartz said in a press release. \u201cWe are also acutely aware that many more projects in the habitat beyond Rural Lands West are on the horizon, and this lawsuit may well be the panther\u2019s last stand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Florida \u2014 Environmental advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday against several federal agencies over their handling of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-548078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}