Corridor Connections

By Haley Moody, July 1, 2025 Last month, staff from the Florida Springs Institute attended the Corridor Connect Conference at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. Corridor Connect is a three-day event hosted by the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation in order to facilitate and strengthen vital connections for land conservation in Florida. Driven by the need to protect Florida's 131 imperiled animal species from rapid development, the Florida Wildlife Corridor is an 18-million acre continuous patchwork of both wild…

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Springs are Sacred

Last night, the Florida Springs Welcome Center in High Springs was filled to the brim with guests for our Sacred Springs Stories event, co-hosted with the Rights of Water and organized by Lucinda Merritt. The evening began as beautiful music filled the air from flutist Jim Durocher, setting a reverent tone for the divine storytelling that was to come. Special thanks to Michael Monroe for filming the event. Internationally acclaimed artist Margaret Ross Tolbert spoke about her…

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New Publication: Longnose Gar Spawning Within Floating Vegetation

Dear Springs Enthusiast, We’re excited to share a fascinating discovery made right here in one of our beloved springs. FSI Environmental Scientist Bill Hawthorne, Dr. Ken Sulak, and FSI board member Dr. Steve Walsh have published a research paper on Longnose Gar spawning within floating vegetation mats - a behavior never before published for this iconic fish species! Observed and photographed over the past two years, this behavior reveals how Longnose Gar utilize floating vegetation for egg deposition. The mats, suspended…

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Your Support Makes a Difference.

2024 was a landmark year for the Florida Springs Institute. We celebrated what would have been the 100th birthday of our namesake, Howard T. Odum. We also honored the legacy of our organization by completing an Ecological Health Assessment of the Silver Springs System, the location where Dr. Robert Knight studied under Dr. Odum and the seeds that eventually grew into the Florida Springs Institute first nestled themselves into the fertile mind of our dear founder. This…

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Read more about the article Florida’s Springs – Dying of Thirst

Florida’s Springs – Dying of Thirst

By Robert Knight, PhD Published in Underwater Speleology, Vol 51 No3 Autumn 2024. Clear, pure groundwater is the basis for life in Florida’s artesian springs. Remove flowing water and a spring is a sinkhole, a stagnant window into the dark limestone underworld. A spring’s functionality or “life” declines when its flow decreases, and it increases in proportion to flow. The living assemblage of plants and animals characteristic of a Florida spring is directly dependent upon the quantity…

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