Saving the Florida Wildlife Corridor | National Geographic

[Music] Florida is like no other place on earth. It's the land, it's the water, it's the people. And the Florida wildlife corridor is the backbone that connects it all. But we are seeing changes because of those thousand people a day that are moving to Florida. We have to maintain that our environment in state of Florida is our number one priority. Without it, we do not have healthy water, we do not have healthy beaches, and people don't come here. It took mother nature and God a long time to develop this land like it is, and we just need to slow down and figure out how we're going to save.

[Music] In Florida, our wild places are largely hidden in plain sight. These natural assets will not persevere the coming decades unless we make an investment in protecting them. The Florida wildlife corridor is a statewide network of public conservation lands and private working lands that work together to provide connected green space for water, wildlife, and people.

"Hey, do you check for bugs?"

"Oh, there you go, there should be something there."

"Yeah, nothing under here."

The amazing thing about the Florida wildlife corridor is it's not just land protected as a state park; most of it is working landscape protected with an easement. And so that mosaic of landscapes is providing both clean water and the economy of agriculture here in Florida. If you can start making linkages and building upon what we've done as a state, you help our resources in the future. You guarantee all the things we depend on as Floridians, and you also improve the investment you already made.

We won't be able to do that unless we've saved that green infrastructure here in Florida. If we can get that work done today, we'll be able to protect it for future generations. We as Floridians have a unique opportunity to build on an incredible legacy of conservation. Twenty-seven percent of Florida is public land, but the thing is, that's not enough. We've done a tremendous job over the past 50 years in setting the pace for conservation in Florida, and now we need to finish that journey.

Because we're fighting a tremendous onslaught of development— a hundred thousand acres a year lost to housing, into roads, and to shopping malls. By 2070, if development continues at the same pace, we're projected to lose five million acres of rural and natural land in the state of Florida, and that's nearly all the missing links in the Florida wildlife corridor. If we don't protect the corridor now, most of our state parks and national parks are going to be islands surrounded by development, and that's not a world I want my kids to inherit.

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"I'm a sixth generation Florida rancher. Our family moved down here in 1850, middle 1850, brought their cattle with them. My dad saw the change; he saw that people were going to move here. We couldn't stop them. He always said, you know, people don't come here to see a subdivision; they come here to see our scenic landscape. I mean, once you start checkerboarding developments in there, you're not going to better stop it. Then, if we were surrounded on all four sides of development, it would be hard to ranch. The ranching business is not the most profitable business there is, so there's other things you got to learn how to do and keep your land intact."

"You'll find if you can keep your ranch, do a conservation event, you'll find a way to make a living on it. Every rancher I know that went ahead and sold their land to a developer— there's not one of them that didn't come back and say, I wish I wouldn't have done that. Once we lose the Florida wildlife corridor, we've lost it all."

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"People have this vision of what a lager is, and it's not what I think of myself. We cultivate our product, and then we harvest it, and we replant it. One of the tools we have is conservation easements. Conservation easements are a legacy tool because it means that as a landowner, you have put restrictions on that land that lasts forever. You give up your development rights, and it helps the landowner because they receive payment for those rights that they give up."

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"You know, we're seeing more and more conversion; we call it from timber to development. That's concerning, but most of the neighbors that we have are just as determined as we are to not develop. I've heard a phrase that the last crop that will grow on these lands is houses. That's not a good option. Tourism is our number one commodity in the state of Florida, no doubt. As a fishing guide, I recognize that water is our number one issue and that we have to take care of our water, and otherwise, no one goes fishing. Every little thing that happens north of us affects the bay immediately and in turn affects our fishery, it affects our economy, it affects our way of life."

"I'm gonna cast down this slick right here."

"Okay."

"There is a direct correlation between the amount of urban development, the amount of green space, and our ability to have clean water in the state of Florida. And we are already past the tipping point. We can't lose a single blade of grass at this point. Now is the time to write a legacy that Florida will remember for generations. Now is the time to strike and write what will be a lasting legacy of Florida. It's a unique opportunity; it’s not going to come around again."

"I want my grandkids to say he was a good granddad. I wanted to say that he had vision and that he did take good care of the land and protected it and that he saved it where we could go ahead and do the same thing with our grandchildren one day. When we come together to save this Florida wildlife corridor, we'll be saving these lands for our children, but also setting up a global example of what's possible for people and nature together."

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"And that's something worth fighting for."

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