NAPLES, Fla. — When Joe Guthrie tries to explain why a statewide wildlife corridor is important, he starts like this:
"Imagine you're a bear. A bear living in Collier County. And you've been out-competed for resources. You need to move to survive, so where do you go?"
Once upon a time, that answer was simple: anywhere you wanted to go.
Today, with developments and roads crisscrossing Florida, the answer has become complex. As you read this, the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition is traipsing through the woods, trying to prove that Florida's green spaces are in fact connected. The team of bear biologist Joe Guthrie, photojournalist Carlton Ward Jr., conservationist Mallory Lykes Dimmitt and filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus will traverse more than 1,000 miles from the soggy swamps of South Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park north to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southern Georgia.
The team is paddling, biking and hiking for 100 days, through public and private lands, documenting its journey and spreading the word on why connectivity matters, whether you're a bear, a Florida panther or a human.
"If you have these areas of wilderness without connections ... you essentially have a zoo without bars," says Chuck Collins, regional director for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "It's important for biodiversity to have these connections."
The idea that species within an area are dependent on other species within that same area is nothing new. But genetic diversity within a species is important, too.
With increased genetic diversity comes better tolerance to disease, better reproductive survival rates, and more genetic variation, which ultimately translates to better adaptability.
But if you're a bear -- separated from other bears by highways, condo complexes and shopping malls -- finding others to breed with can be tough. So bears wander. They wander into neighborhoods, they amble across ranches and occasionally they end up in front of passing tractor-trailers on the highway.
Exactly how black bears roam from one spot to the next isn't entirely known. But one credit for this expedition goes to Bear 34, who was tagged and monitored by Guthrie and a few of his colleagues at the University of Kentucky, providing critical information that made the concept of a totally connected wildlife greenway more concrete.
If Bear 34 could traverse land that wasn't necessarily set-aside as conservation space, then so could the team.
But it's one thing to hike across the Everglades and Big Cypress, two huge tracts of public land. It's another thing entirely to travel across hundreds of miles of private property.
Yet that's exactly what the team is doing. Amazingly, though the journey itself has taken two and a half years to plan, the team has met almost no resistance in gaining access to any of the private ranches it needs to cross to complete the trip.
"It's critical that we have agriculture and ranchers on board because they own the bulk of the land that would provide these critical linkages," says Collins. "Public agencies would never be able to buy all the land necessary to link current conservation areas together, and even if they could buy it, managing it would be cost prohibitive."
Leisa Priddy, owner of JB Ranch in Immokalee, is one of the private landowners in support of the wildlife corridor, allowing the expedition to cross her land.
"I think this expedition is important to ranchers and property owners in general because it spotlights how important our lands are in all of this," she said. Priddy, who is also a commissioner for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee, says she sees panthers and other critters on her land regularly, which she doesn't mind, so long as they don't wreak too much havoc on her herd of Cracker cattle.
"Sure, we have some interactions with them that aren't always positive, but as long as it doesn't negatively impact our operation, I don't mind them being on our land." Priddy said. "I don't care how many times you've seen a panther before, each time I see one it still takes my breath away."
And not only does seeing a Florida panther or a Florida black bear take your breath away, it also generally bodes well for the health and well-being of the ecosystem.
