Florida Wildlife Corridor
The Florida Wildlife Corridor offers a deep register of conservation story content. For this reason, Project Paradise Film Fund has chosen the Florida Wildlife Corridor as its focus-area for the inaugural Natural Florida Film Grant.
The Florida Wildlife Corridor is a statewide network of ecological corridors designed for a “landscape-scale” conservation approach as a way to address habitat loss and fragmentation across Florida. The Corridor is 18 million acres of many types of protected areas: 7 million acres of working lands (ranchlands and timberlands), state, federal and county lands, 1,346 named rivers and streams, Florida State Parks and Forests, and natural Springs springsheds. These areas are vital to Florida conservation, and the effort protects the habitats of Florida’s many threatened and endangered species.
The Corridor stems from a decades-long effort among scientists, conservationists, organizations, and governments, and it has resulted in arguably the most ambitious landscape conservation plan of any U.S. state. The Corridor links identified tracts of land to create connected conservation networks and ecological congruence. Preserving these key areas contributes to saving iconic wildlife such as the Crested Caracara, Snail Kite, Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, the Florida Panther, West Indian Manatee, Gulf Sturgeon, Whooping Crane, and the Eastern Indigo Snake, among others, and nearly 567 imperiled plant species.