The owner of a failing inn and his roadkill collector friend devise a Bigfoot hoax to draw in tourists, but a Miccosukee Hunter is set to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“These animals are like ghosts,” says Carlton Ward Jr.—National Geographic explorer, photographer, and 8th generation Floridian—at the beginning of this captivating film that endeavors to keep the Florida Panther from becoming just that: a ghost. As the last big cat surviving in the eastern United States and the state animal of Florida, the panther is an icon of Florida’s ever-diminishing wild places, as revealed in the film’s sumptuous images. Leading a team that includes cowboys, wildlife biologists, photographers/videographers, and a lot of folks who simply care about the future of Florida’s fragile ecology, Ward treks repeatedly into the Everglades and expanses of South Florida to seek, record, and save these ghosts.

An ode to the Florida Everglades, past and present, told through the prescient writings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and those who today call the region home.