Florida Wildlife Corridor Turns One

Marco Islanders are blessed to live in an area of the 18-million-acre Florida Wildlife Corridor that is protected. But as the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act celebrates its first anniversary, there is still work to be done. While 9.6 million acres of the corridor are protected, 8.1 million acres remain unprotected.

Jason Lauritsen, chief conservation officer at the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, is making the success of the Florida Wildlife Corridor his life's work.

 “The green spine of the state has a benefit to people,” Lauritsen said, describing the corridor, "not just to wildlife, but to our way of life and our economy. It’s this magnificent, wonderful, marvelous thing that, so far, Floridians have preserved.”

A native Iowan, Lauritsen was introduced to Florida while visiting relatives as a kid.

“I saw the theme parks and the beaches,” Lauritsen said, “it wasn’t until I was getting ready to go to college that I realized there was anything wild in the state.”

An internship at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, an hour’s drive from Marco Island, at age 19, was Lauritsen’s baptism into the wild side of Florida. He visited Florida several summers while completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees back in Iowa. He went on to work with Audubon of Southwest Florida for 17 years. 

The Florida Wildlife Corridor Act was passed unanimously last year.

“Everybody,” Lauritsen said, "both house and senate and the governor said yes. It was a rare moment of bipartisanship in a very divisive political atmosphere. That bill passed. Now there’s this statewide formal recognition that this 18-million-acre footprint is a really important thing for the state."  

The Florida Wildlife Corridor encompasses the entire state, including the panhandle. Its purpose is to protect land critical to wildlife survival, mitigating negative impacts of climate change, and supporting Florida’s economy.

"The Florida Wildlife Corridor is an 18-million-acre landscape that runs throughout Florida and represents the highest and best ecological values the state has to offer,” said Lauritsen. “It represents 75 of our state parks. It represents 32 state forests and thousands of miles of waterways and trails where people can recreate.”

Some of the good news is that much of the unprotected land is currently working lands, ranches and timber operations. The Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation wants to make sure we don’t lose this connective land for future generations.

"It’s this really important landscape throughout the state,” Lauritsen says of the corridor. "Out of the 18 million acres, 10 million acres have already been purchased and invested in by Floridians.  Those are our state parks, our state forests, our national parks, the Everglades National Park, Ocala National Forest. All of those iconic places in Florida make up 10 million acres of conserved lands within the state. Part of the corridor is also working lands. We’re looking at ranches and timber operations that are within that matrix of 18 million acres. Those working lands are often the connective tissue that links the landscape so our parks and preserves and forests and waterways are - and remain - connected.”

Not surprisingly, Lauritsen said people are the biggest threat to the corridor.

“We have 1,000 people moving to the state every day,” Lauritsen said. "People are planning new communities, new roads. Because as our roads fill up, as our neighborhoods fill up, we need to find places for people. As we do that, if we’re not planning with an understanding of the corridor, we’ll inadvertently sever it. Inadvertently we’ll put a community or road somewhere where there shouldn’t be one. When we could have done it somewhere else, or differently.”

"The biggest threat here is that we grow in a way that’s incompatible with the Florida Wildlife Corridor,” he said. “There are ways for us to grow, to accommodate those people who want to come to the state. There are ways to do that that will preserve the corridor for us and for future generations."

As Florida continues to grow at a rapid rate, Lauritsen and his colleagues have their work cut out for them. While the passing of the act was monumental, it is not regulatory.

"The Florida Wildlife Corridor Act that passed a year ago,” Lauritsen said, "that was not regulatory. So there’s no teeth in that. Different localities have embraced that in different ways. Some local governments have embraced it fully and are doing what they can within their jurisdictions to try to incentivize and see through that vision.”

Lauritsen offers a planned development outside of Orlando as an example.

"When you look at the way we operate from a regulatory and jurisdictional standpoint,” Lauritsen said, "we have all these property lines that govern how we do business. But if we really want to keep Black Bear and Florida Panthers, and other large wildlife, we can’t let our investment in planning stop at a fence line or a property line.”

“In Lake County there’s a community project called Wellness Way. When we found out as an organization that that project was gaining steam, we reached out to the folks who were designing it. We said, ‘We’d really love to make sure you guys are aware of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Where it overlaps your plans. They did that, they took a look at it, and they incorporated the corridor within their design guidelines. As they’re thinking through what they’re going to do with the community, they incorporated that philosophy of protecting the corridor into how they’re designing it.”

"Had that not happened, if we had not informed them, then they would have never had the opportunity to recognize, ‘Oh, here’s that sensitive spot.’

"Because we got in front of them in time to have these conversations, it was a painless thing,” Lauritsen continues. “So instead of being inadvertent villains, they can become, in some real way, heroes of the story. Because they recognize the value and they planned accordingly.”

"Now it’s not all said and done,” Lauritsen cautions. “That project is still a ways off from starting to see execution. But the principle there was we got to folks in time to educate them to the point where they could adjust their plans. And that’s what we want to do for the whole state.”

Lauritsen is also keeping a close eye on Collier County. In addition to great population increases, he sees many positives in the county.

"Collier County is a great example of a place that is growing fast and has big expanses of land that have been the subject of plans and planning,” Lauritsen said. "It’s been a painful process in Collier at times to make sure that you’re balancing the needs of the environment with growth. It can get really tough to navigate that. The work on Alligator Alley with the bridging. Big Cypress reserve, putting in the culverts, things to accommodate water flow to connect hydrology. Creating panther and wildlife crossings. Those are really good, important things. FDOT District One is really taking seriously the goal of making room for panthers in how they build roads in Southwest Florida. That’s good. There was a Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission blueprint study done, I think in 1996, which was phenomenal, which looked at panthers and black bears and other wide-ranging species and came up with these least cost pathways and these terrestrial routes that need to be protected.”

"One of the blessings of where you are right now is that you’ve got the 10,000 Islands, Picayune Strand, the Everglades, and Big Cypress National Preserve,” Lauritsen said. “Marco and Naples has a wealth of ecological riches. A lot of the things you all have identified and are working on as improvements, things like permeability under U.S. 41. Roads are barriers to both wildlife and water, creating permeability means providing the opportunity for flow, whether that’s water flow or wildlife flow, through and across those barriers. Wildlife crossings, culverts, bridging, those are permeability features along roadways. There’s been several efforts to try to improve those things. When that is done, there’s a benefit to the wildlife and the wildlife corridor. It’s also going to result in improved water quality and more natural fluctuations in salinity in the 10,000 Island area. So folks that are interested in fishing will perhaps take notice of that. I know that there are also developments coastally in the area, properties and developments that pop up against the edge of the 10,000 Islands. Those kinds of things can chip away a little bit at the value of wild lands. Given the location of that area of the state, it is what I would call a hub. It’s a large, significant-sized patch of tremendous habitat that provides for Florida Panthers and Black Bears to have a chance.”

Red Tide is always a concern to Marco Islanders. Lauritsen believes the Florida Wildlife Corridor will have a positive impact on Red Tide.

"I was down there last year talking to some of the Chamber of Commerce folks,” Lauritsen said. "They were mentioning about Red Tide. They said if there’s a Red Tide event anywhere in the state that gets coverage, people stop coming. They stop going to restaurants. It might have nothing to do with what’s going on right there. It’s a perception problem. After hearing that from the business community in Marco and Naples, I started to talk to other Chamber of Commerce’s around the state. It’s a common theme. Red Tide affects the businesses. The reality here is water quality issues in general. What kind of nutrients are coming off the landscape? How are we protecting the wetlands? How are we able to retain water during flood events? Those are issues that overlap the footprint of the corridor. Even though we haven’t defined the geography of the corridor solely based on the watersheds, watersheds are a part of it. Whether it’s the water quality going into a spring and feeding the spring system, or the water quality of a river flowing into an estuary, those water quality issues start upstream in the corridor. And there’s a definite connection.  

Lauritsen quoted one of his favorite authors, novelist Wendell Berry. "'Do unto those downstream as you’d have those upstream do unto you,” Lauritsen said, “it’s the golden rule turned into an ecological principle. One of our goals is to help people understand that inextricable connection between freshwater and terrestrial habitat and the health of our coastal waters. If we want swimmable coasts, if we want fishable estuaries, if we want to have good quality on our beaches, then we have to pay attention to what’s going on upstream. Southwest Florida is a really perfect candidate for those conversations.”

Lauritsen is philosophical about his life's work with the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

"For me,” Lauritsen said, “it’s being able to talk to and think about and plan with people from all sectors of life represented in the state to try to put together support for the wildlife I’ve come to love. That’s the motivating factor for me.”