We have long believed that the most powerful tool in conservation isn't just a policy brief or a land deed — it's a story well told. That conviction led us to Path of the Panther, a film-driven conservation initiative that is using the haunting beauty of Florida's most iconic predator to fight for the future of the entire state's wild places.
The Problem
Florida grows by nearly 1,000 people per day. That's one million new residents every three years, and with each wave of growth, wildlife habitat gives way to subdivisions and highways. For the Florida panther — already among the first species added to the U.S. Endangered Species List in 1973 — this relentless development isn't just a threat. It's a death sentence. Motor vehicle collisions now claim nearly 30 individual panthers every year, making roads the single leading cause of death for the species. Once numbering as few as 30 adults, the panther population has rebounded to nearly 200 today, but scientists estimate that true recovery requires at least three separate populations of more than 240 breeding individuals. That recovery is only possible with one thing: a connected network of habitat stretching the length of the state, known as the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
The Approach
What began as a moonshot photo and film mission has evolved into a full-fledged movement. Path of the Panther, produced by Grizzly Creek Films and Wildpath Media, is the rare conservation project that leads with cinema before it leads with science. The Emmy Award-winning team — including National Geographic Explorer and eighth-generation Floridian Carlton Ward Jr., director and writer Eric Bendick, and impact producer Tori Linder — spent years deep in the swamps, ranchlands, and forests of Florida, using custom-built camera trap studios to capture footage of the panther that no audience had ever seen. The result is a documentary that doesn't just inform — it moves people.
Within the last three years, the Path of the Panther team has demonstrated what happens when impact communications become advocacy tools. Their storytelling work can be directly tied to two landmark outcomes: the bipartisan, unanimous passage of the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, and nearly $2 billion in combined state and federal conservation investment. The panther is now the only big cat in the eastern United States actively expanding its range — a quiet but extraordinary sign that when the right story reaches the right audience, recovery is possible.
Now the team is turning its sights on the next frontier: education. Building on years of curriculum development with National Geographic educators, Path of the Panther is uniquely positioned to distribute the Emmy Award-winning film — alongside a comprehensive suite of interdisciplinary learning resources — into classrooms and communities across the state. The goal is ambitious and clear: protect nearly one million acres within the Florida Wildlife Corridor by the end of the decade, helping Florida achieve 30% protected status by 2030, and creating a framework replicable as a model for a national network of wildlife corridors.
The Grant
The J.W. Couch Foundation is proud to serve as the anchor funder for Path of the Panther's statewide educational film and curriculum distribution, committing an $84,000 grant administered through the Wild Foundation, which serves as fiscal agent for the initiative. The grant supports the expansion of the film's reach into schools, nature centers, and community organizations across Florida, ensuring that the story of the panther — and the land it needs to survive — becomes part of how the next generation understands their home state.
Our path to this partnership came through The Nature Conservancy, a longtime grantee partner of the foundation, whose referral felt like a natural closing of a circle. And the work resonates deeply with our own storytelling roots. Our film The Paper Bear — a nonprofit feature film produced by JW Studios — follows Florida black bears through the extraordinary biodiversity of Northwest Florida with the same animating belief: that a well-told story is the most direct route to a person's willingness to protect something. Both films are rooted in Florida. Both follow a wild animal as a lens for something much larger. Path of the Panther is proof of what's possible when that approach is given time, resources, and the right team to see it through.
The Impact
The Florida Wildlife Corridor Act passed in 2021 with unanimous bipartisan support. Since then, nearly $2 billion in public investment has flowed toward protecting the corridor's vast network of public and private lands. Path of the Panther helped build the cultural and political will that made that possible. The next chapter — securing nearly one million additional acres through broad public awareness and grassroots conservation support — will require reaching far beyond the audiences that film festivals and streaming platforms can touch. It will require classrooms. It will require young people who grow up knowing the panther's name, understanding its place in the ecosystem, and feeling personally invested in its survival.
That is exactly what this grant is designed to make possible.
J.W. Couch believed that good fortune should be shared. In Florida, that fortune is an ancient, still-wild landscape capable of harboring a big cat. Supporting the Path of the Panther is one way we continue to honor that legacy — one story, one corridor, one classroom at a time.
