Reporters can register for the Live Event to ask questions about the embargoed study here
Newswise — As wildfires, floods and other climate disasters spread across the country, a first-of-its-kind study finds that Florida’s ambitious Wildlife Corridor has the potential to shield the state from similar threats.
The study also found that the 18-million-acre Florida Wildlife Corridor (FLWC) – the only designated statewide corridor in the nation – can protect Florida’s unique biodiversity, ecosystem services and working lands against the threat of overdevelopment that is rapidly growing as the state’s population surges by around 1,000 people each day. Without proactive planning of land use, Florida is projected to lose 3.5 million acres of land to development by 2070, in part due to this population growth.
Spanning from Alabama to the Everglades, the FLWC is a superhighway of interconnected acres of wildlands, working lands and waters that offers a world-class adaption plan facing down ground zero of climate change in an already warm location.
The new report, “The Florida Wildlife Corridor and Climate Change: Managing Florida’s Natural and Human Landscapes for Prosperity and Resilience,” offers strategic actions to protect Florida’s most valuable assets – its people, places and wildlife – from the worst impacts of climate change. The report demonstrates that fully conserving the FLWC not only protects iconic species such as the Florida panther, but also supports jobs, economies and ecosystem services including shielding communities against growing floods and wildfires. About 90 percent of Floridians live within 20 miles of the corridor.
The report paints a holistic picture of how climate change and population growth will impact Florida’s communities and natural resources, and how the FLWC, if it were fully conserved, could modify those outcomes. Currently, about 10 million acres of the expansive FLWC’s 18 million acres are already conserved, thanks to decades of efforts by agencies, nonprofits and landowners.
Importantly, this innovative report can serve as a model for other regions throughout the nation and the world experiencing growing populations, climate risks and at-risk biodiversity.
The corridor, a critical conservation initiative aimed at preserving natural landscape connectivity across Florida, is the culmination of four decades of research and advocacy that led to the passage of the FLWC Act in 2021.
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