Are you trying to use Perl 5.10 and the smart match operator? Here's the solution written with named captures, the nifty new 5.10 features that mean you never have to think about $1, $2, and so on. The names become keys in the new hash %+, and the matched text are the values:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.10.0

use 5.010;

my $text = "Grand Canyon   70%";

$text ~~ /
    (?<name>    .*\S        )
    \s+
    (?<percent> \d\d%       )
    /x;

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper( \%+ )
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The output automatically labels your values:

$VAR1 = {
          'percent' => '70%',
          'name' => 'Grand Canyon'
        };
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Here's the boring Perl 5.8 way:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $text = "Grand Canyon   70%";

$text =~ /
    (  .*\S    )
    \s+
    ( \d\d%    )
    /x;

print <<"HERE";
1: $1
2: $2
HERE
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