Florida is facing an environmental crisis as growing development takes over green spaces, according to information shared at the April 4 seminar, “Protecting the Florida Wildlife Corridor,” hosted by 1,000 Friends of Florida.

“We’re losing rural land to development very rapidly,” said Tom Hoctor, director of the Center for Landscape Conservation Planning at the University of Florida. “We need to protect resources before they are lost to development.”

Hoctor said Florida’s human population has been growing exponentially for more than 80 years. The state’s 2023 estimated census population is 22.6 million.

“Our rate of growth is 800 to 1,000 new people moving to Florida per day,” he continued. “That puts a lot of pressure on Florida’s natural land.”

The state has lost more than 11 million acres of forest and wetlands to development in the last 50 years, he said. Wildlife habitat loss from development has extreme impacts on native species.

“We have a high level of endemism (species found only in Florida),” Hoctor explained. The biggest threat to maintaining the biodiversity of Florida’s wildlife is habitat fragmentation, he said.

The Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) is the foundation of the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

Hoctor said it is important to identify and protect critical lands now before lands needed for the wildlife corridor are developed.

“Florida has a lot to lose,” he said.

FEGN identifies the best opportunities to connect large conservation lands for both biodiversity and ecosystem services.

He said sea level rise is also a concern, because coastal wildlife will move inland as the water level rises.

He said for a lot of the coastal areas in South Florida, the opportunity to conserve greenspace is already gone, lost to development. In these urbanized areas, the chance for connectivity between the coasts and the interior is also gone. The remaining mangroves are caught between the sea and development.

The rural green spaces of the state’s interior are a natural support system that maintains native species, he explained. In addition to providing habitat for native wildlife, the green spaces help clean the air, clean the water and allow water to percolate into the earth to recharge the aquifer.

The Florida Wildlife Corridor Law was passed in 2021, but the idea started in 2010, with a campaign to make people aware of the importance of preventing development of the corridor land.

Almost 8 million acres of land in the Florida Wildlife Corridor is currently unprotected against development, he said. He said the land is on the list to protect, but is waiting for funding.

Hoctor said they are concerned about approximately 90 “bottlenecks” in the corridor which could fragment the corridor. These include land uses that are not compatible with wildlife habitat, smaller parcels with fragmented land ownership or constricted, narrow spaces.

He said they want to work with the landowners and the county officials in those areas to work on plans to protect these lands.

“Working agricultural lands are important to the corridor,” he said. About 80% of the unprotected lands in the wildlife corridor is made up of ranches and timberlands.  

“In many places, we can work with the landowners to do things like conservation easements,” he said. With a conservation easement the state  buys the development rights for the property, and the land owner can continue to own the land and use the land for its current agricultural use. This keeps the land on the tax rolls and the land owner continues to manage the land.

“We have a lot of work to do but we have partners willing and ready to have that conversation,” he said.

“You cannot protect the Florida Wildlife Corridor without protecting large ranches,” he said. In addition, some smaller ranches are in areas that could be critical bottlenecks.

He said modeling of current trends shows that if the current development trends continue, Florida will lose about 3.5 million acres of land to development by 2070. About 1.1 million acres that could be targeted for development are currently ranchlands.

Florida needs to save these grazing lands, he said. If these ranch lands are lost to development, “we won’t have a Florida Wildlife Corridor,” he said. It’s important to protect that land now.

He said to adequately fund Florida Forever and the Rural Family Lands programs, the state needs to allocate about $500 million each year, as well as maximize use of federal funding options.

This year, the Legislature allocated about $300 million in state dollars to these land conservation programs. He said it will continue to be a challenge to convince the legislature to fully fund the programs every year.

“If we were to grow more compactly, we would lose about 40% less,” he said. “Growth management could have a role. There are ways to accommodate all of the people projected to move to Florida and do it in a much more compacted, smaller footprint.”