9 minute read
The Florida Wildlife Corridor
by Jason Lauritsen and Nicole Brand
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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. 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 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.
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.
Formerly Proposed Florida Trail Reroute
NOT JUST WILDLIFE The weave in Florida’s landscape tapestry is fine and complex, and it requires the discipline of science to expose, understand, measure and prioritize the essential relationships at work in our ecosystem. For the non-scientist, this is often daunting. However, it's important to understand why a corridor is worth protecting at all. A connectivity based approach extends beyond strict application to wildlife as well, and is invoked as a solution to address water quality, flood control, air quality and other ecosystem services. Elected officials and agency leadership charged with safeguarding these quality of life indicators and our economic health would benefit from a sound understanding of the link to an intact and healthy wild Florida.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES Sixty years ago there were only 5 million residents in Florida. Since then we’ve added another million residents every four years, reaching an estimated 21.5 million in 2019. Alongside this swelling residential population is a growing stream of tourists. In 2019, we saw the 9th year in a row of increased tourism - 131 million people visited Florida. More rooftops, more cars, more conflict with wildlife and wild places. The growth rate of the human footprint is outpacing our conservation efforts. How we grow will make all the difference. As the urban and suburban boundary pushes out into the rural and natural areas, bottlenecks emerge, creating challenges for corridors. The more Floridians come to know, understand and value our special wild places, the more likely we are to make decisions that lead to a sustainable future for wild Florida.
EXPEDITIONS The Corridor has introduced this vital connected landscape to the public through films of expeditions led by conservationist: Mallory Dimmitt, bear biologist, Joe Guthrie, and conservation photographer, Carlton Ward, Jr. The fundamental goal of the first expedition was to traverse the state along a path a bear or panther may take to demonstrate that Florida still had a statewide wildlife corridor worth saving. The journey stretched from Flamingo at the edge of Florida Bay into the Everglades up to the Okefenokee Swamp that spills into southern Georgia. The next expedition mapped the second half of the Florida Wildlife Corridor from the Everglades Headwaters to the Gulf Islands National Seashore in the Florida Panhandle. Since then, the Corridor treks have centered around highlighting critical areas in danger of irreparably severing the Corridor. The 2018 mini-expedition navigated and documented a critical chokepoint of the Corridor
Trekker Joe Guthrie taking a dip in Lake Godwin on the 2019 Lake Wales Ridge Expedition
Partner Trail Mixer event during the 2019 Lake Wales Ridge Expedition. Left to right - Joe Guthrie, David Waldrop, David Price, Mallory Dimmitt, Jerry Burns, Carlton Ward, Kelly Van Patten, Matt Caldwell.
Watch Florida Wildlife Corridor trekkers journey across Florida's imperiled backbone, the Lake Wales Ridge. The Wild Divide is currently streaming on Facebook.
in the hopes it would be saved. By exploring this narrow, but critical, connection a call to action was issued for additional conservation to protect and restore this remaining wild thread within a growing urban interface between the headwaters of the Everglades and the Green Swamp. The latest expedition launched from Highlands Hammock State Park and twisted through working farms and ranches, up onto Lake Wales Ridge, culminating in The Nature Conservancy’s Tiger Creek Preserve. The expedition goal was to highlight the search for solutions undertaken by the many individuals and agencies working in the region to preserve the rare ridge scrub and sandhills that support an astonishing number of endemic species. The expedition shed light on the need for proper wildlife crossings under US 27 to connect the expanding barrier of traffic and development associated with the highway. The effort to bring these stories to light are paramount to the collective mission of protecting wild Florida. The actualized vision of a connected, protected, and restored Corridor relies heavily on collaboration.
MOVING FORWARD COLLABORATIVELY People will not save what they have not seen, or experienced. Getting people into the woods, wetlands and waterways to experience first hand the natural beauty of our state is critical. The Florida Trail Association (FTA) does a phenomenal job connecting people to the land, and has long been a wonderful corridor partner. Hiking and biking represent compatible uses on many segments along the wildlife corridor. Representatives of the FTA have participated in the Conservation Partner Summits hosted by the Florida Wildlife Corridor. They have also accompanied our trekkers on expedition segments. And most recently, during August 2020's new moon, the FTA spent time alongside several other Florida conservation organizations convening in Florida's only internationally designated Dark Skies area - Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park (KPPSP) for a scaled down partner conversation to explore how we can continue to work together on our common goals of conservation across a challenging landscape. The KPPSP is a tremendous conservation property within the Florida Wildlife Corridor, perfectly illustrating another overlooked and underappreciated connection, between wide open undeveloped landscapes and dark skies, which provide quiet and generous views of the Milky Way. How easy it is for those of us living under the streets lights of developed Florida to forget just how beautiful the night sky can be. And for that sphinx moth and scores of other important pollinators, a dark sky is yet another ecological cog at risk of being lost. Many areas of Florida remain wild. If we hope to keep it that way, we must be intentional about it. Protecting this network of green arteries which connect the states core habitat patches will require significant resources and coordination among a broad group of stakeholders. This is landscape conservation, and we have a long way yet to go together.
HOW CAN FTA MEMBERS GET INVOLVED? We’ve got a big year ahead of us in conservation and it will take the efforts of many. Volunteer with your favorite organizations. Invite others into your favorite wild places. Share that world with them and contribute to the cultivation of love for wild Florida. When you see a film that inspires you, whether it be an expedition film like The Forgotten Coast, The Last Green Thread, or another meaningful production that speaks to you, share it. In the wise words of Hilary Swain, Executive Director of Archbold Biological Station, "We'll always be appalled at what we've lost and amazed at what we've managed to save."
Introducing the Florida Trail Passport
VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR DETAILS FLORIDATRAIL.ORG
Discover the natural beauty of the Florida Trail through this pictorial journey of the trail, end to end.
With a Foreword by Jim Kern and photography by Sandra Friend and John Keatley, this keepsake book showcases the natural wonders and unique features of each section of the Florida Trail in moments captured by Sandra and John.
Mini coffee table book Hardcover 5x7” format 192 pages Short overviews of each trail section Photograph locations identified at the end of the book
