The Florida Wildlife Corridor by Jason Lauritsen and Nicole Brand
of partner organizations and agencies are at work protecting, restoring and conserving the corridor’s vast and diverse complex of aquatic and terrestrial native habitats. The future of the corridor is directly dependent on our collective success, which begins by fostering connections between Floridians and the land.
A vision of a connected, protected, and restored corridor THE CONSPICUOUS IMPORTANCE OF CONNECTION. This past year, the importance of connection has been palpable. The quality of our lives is dependent on countless unseen relationships with the world around us. Aldo Leopold tells us that there is value in any experience that reminds us of our dependency on the fundamental organization of the ecosystem. He quotes the 1949 Sand County Almanac, saying “We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry .” The immense complexity of the natural world compels the scientist and the naturalist to an intellectual humility. We are drawn to the mystery of the swamp and the woodland; from the minute oxygen producing diatoms within the rich periphyton mats in our wetlands, night time pollinators like the sphinx moth, or the Florida black bear whose padded feet occasionally record their passage on a trail we share. Each cog in the ecological machinery serves a purpose. We risk severing the connections we don’t value, or that we misunderstand. 18
Florida Trail Association
A wildlife corridor is a meaningful connection between two or more patches of native habitat. The Florida Wildlife Corridor is the embodiment of landscape connections spanning roughly seventeen million acres going from Florida Bay to Georgia and Alabama, linking the world class parks and preserves that prior generations have protected. The Florida Wildlife Corridor is also an organization that gives voice to the value of protecting the physical corridor and the countless ecological mechanisms that comprise it. Thankfully, we are not alone. Dozens
ORIGINS OF A FLORIDA WILDLIFE CORRIDOR The concept of a statewide ecological corridor is not new to Florida. It took decades of work by numerous scientists and conservation organizations to determine the need for landscape-scale conservation approaches, and specifically corridors, as a way to address habitat loss and fragmentation across Florida. These decades long efforts brought into play the right combination of people, need, and opportunity, resulting in arguably the most ambitious landscape conservation plan of any U.S. state. Florida has been a leader in landscape level conservation for decades. In 1987, Reed Noss laid out a statewide vision of a connected Florida landscape. The first iteration of the Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) was developed by Margaret Carr and Tom Hoctor in 1998 with future updates helping guide land acquisition and expand a recreational trail network. The Florida Wildlife Corridor (Corridor) comprises the top two priority layers of the FEGN model. The Corridorgeography represents the main trunk of our state’s wilderness tree. There are many important branches, but we must preserve the trunk. To do so, we need to continue to build on the foundation of sound conservation planning that considers science and environmental health on the same footing as economic and quality of life considerations. Our growing state depends on it.
THE FLORIDA WILDLIFE CORRIDOR ENCOMPASSES 16.7 MILLION ACRES – 9.8 MILLION ACRES THAT ARE ALREADY PROTECTED AND 6.9 MILLION ACRES OF REMAINING OPPORTUNITY AREAS THAT DO NOT HAVE CONSERVATION STATUS. THE EXACT PROPORTION OF THE OPPORTUNITY AREA THAT NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED FOR FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY WITHIN THE CORRIDOR HAS NOT YET BEEN DETERMINED. FloridaTrail.org
