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 and managed lands that, if permanently protected, can provide safe passage for even Florida’s most wide-ranging animal species.
Defined as “a statewide network of connected lands and waters that supports wildlife and people”, the Florida Wildlife Corridor was established with the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, which passed on June 29, 2021 with unanimous bipartisan support. Since then, 317,000 acres of wild Florida have been approved for protection within (or adjacent to) the Florida Wildlife Corridor, contributing to the total of approximately 10 million acres of the Corridor that are now in permanent protection. This legislation marked a turning point for land conservation in our state. Florida now serves as a model across the entire nation. This effort includes interstate highway wildlife crossings, like the new one on I-4 in Polk County, connecting the Hilochee Wildlife Management Area and providing safe passage for wildlife across one of our nation’s busiest highways.
What does all this have to do with springs? While it may be clear to some how our missions overlap, to answer this question we can refer to the the legislation itself, which clearly states the connection between protecting our land and protecting our waters. In the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act, the stated purpose is to “create incentives for conservation and and sustainable development while sustaining and conserving the green infrastructure that is the foundation of this state’s economy and quality of life by doing the following:
(a) Maintaining wildlife access to the habitats needed to allow for migration of and genetic exchange amongst regional wildlife populations.
(b) Preventing fragmentation of wildlife habitats.
(c) Protecting the headwaters of major watersheds, including the Everglades and the St. Johns River.
(d) Providing ecological connectivity of the lands needed for flood and sea-level rise resiliency and large-scale ecosystem functions, such as water management and prescribed burns essential for land management and restoration.
(e) Preserving and protecting land and waters that are not only vital to wildlife but are critical to this state’s groundwater recharge and that serve as watersheds that provide drinking water to most Floridians and help maintain the health of downstream coastal estuaries.
(f) Providing for wildlife crossings for the protection and safety of wildlife and the traveling public
(g) Helping to sustain this state’s working ranches, farms, and forests that provide compatible wildlife habitats while sustaining rural prosperity and agricultural production.
A “springshed” is the area of land around a spring that contributes groundwater to that spring. Permanently protecting land from development within a springshed is the most efficacious way to protect the water quality in that spring for future generations. An interesting fact about Florida is that with 1,000+ springs all north of lake Okeechobee, the entire northern two thirds of the state is essentially one large springshed. Permanent land protection in this area of the state is springs protection.
The momentum, success, and palpable connectivity of the Florida Wildlife Corridor is contagious. Conference speakers like Julia Watson, author of Lo-Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism inspire us to look to traditional knowledge for sustainable solutions (we can’t wait for her new book to come out, it’s called Low-TEK: Water). A presentation by National Geographic photographer George Mackenzie Jr. brought tears to our eyes as he showed a video clip of the joy of mentoring youth in nature. Seminole tribeswoman and celebrated musician Rita Youngman reminded us of the long-term impact of our decisions as she sang about protecting the earth for our grandchildren.
Like many meandering streams and rivers, land and water conservation may need to take different forms and pathways along the way. If there is one central theme that I took away from the Corridor Connect 2025 conference, it’s that if what we care about continues to matter to us, we’ll find a way.
You can learn more about the Florida Ecological Greenways Network, the science behind the Florida Wildlife Corridor, here.
