Preserving Florida's Endangered Species

A journey through Florida's wild species and spaces

Canaveral National Seashore is the longest stretch (24 miles) of undeveloped beach on Florida's east coast. Fourteen endangered species make their home within its boundaries.

REACHING FOR THE Caribbean like a thumb splayed from the North American mainland, the long Florida peninsula links the temperate north and tropical south in a rich tapestry of forests, swamps, prairies, pellucid springs, meandering rivers, lakes, marshes, barrier islands, and sandy beaches that support thousands of plant and animal species. Called a "paradise" by its fervent admirers, it is a land that has been shaped by heat, rain, fire, periodic freezes, wind (often from tornadoes and hurricanes), ocean tides and currents, and, more recently, people.

During the past century, hunting, fishing, logging, agriculture, mining, and urbanization have taken a heavy toll on natural Florida, even as the state and federal governments, as well as private groups, have established parks and preserves, regulated hunting and fishing, and protected critical habitat. Today, Florida's population stands at 13 million and counting, fourth highest in the nation; its 100 species of plants and animals listed under the Endangered Species Act rank it third highest.

In recent years, Florida has launched a number of innovative programs to aid endangered species and protect and restore imperiled habitat. Aided by basic research into the biology of plants and animals, genetics and population dynamics, and computer modeling of natural systems, the state is at the forefront of international environmental efforts.

The most ambitious of these focuses on the Everglades region of South Florida, fragmented during the past century with 1,400 miles of canals and spillways that have disrupted the natural balance of wet and dry and made the unique "river of grass" one of the most fragile ecosystems in the world.

Now awaiting Congressional action, a $7.8-billion recovery plan -- the largest and most complex in history -- would extensively alter the drainage system so that water flow in the Everglades would more closely mimic pre-development patterns. The project is expected to revitalize the region's vegetative and aquatic communities, including Florida Bay and the Florida reef tract, and to benefit many of its 68 threatened and endangered species, including the Florida panther, snail kite, wood stork, Cape Sable seaside sparrow, crocodile, and green turtle.

ONCE RESIDENT THROUGHOUT THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES, the Florida panther is now found only in South Florida, primarily in Big Cypress Swamp. The 50 to 70 remaining big cats -- threatened by inbreeding and geographic isolation that leave them vulnerable to disease, congenital defects, and natural disasters -- are ranked among the most imperiled mammals in the world. Recently, in a bold experiment, state wildlife officials introduced closely related Texas cougar females into the region, hoping to enhance the panther's genetic variability and thereby ward off, at least for now, what many biologists saw as its impending extinction. Still, more cats are needed in more places to insure the Florida panther's survival.

With its 45-inch wingspan, the rare snail kite cruises above freshwater marshes, hunting its sole prey, apple snails, which it extracts from their shells with its curved beak. The 500 remaining snail kites are found primarily in the Everglades, and ecologists expect that improved water flow will boost their numbers by increasing the supply and availability of apple snails.

Hunting by touch with their bills, wood storks require pools of freshwater that concentrate fish during South Florida's dry season (November to May) to feed themselves and their young, and thus are highly sensitive to changes in water levels. Roosting in greatest numbers in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary northwest of Naples, the storks can be found well into Central Florida, including Kennedy Space Center.

Once common along South Florida's coasts, the crocodile was hunted until only a small population remained in mangrove-fringed saltwater estuaries of Florida Bay lying within the Everglades National Park and a sanctuary on Key Largo. Protected since 1979, this ancient reptile has recently expanded its range to include the cooling lagoons of Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant near Homestead.

For eons Florida beaches and waters have hosted sea turtles, and, although their numbers are significantly reduced, four of the six protected species -- the leatherback, the world's largest turtle; the green, a herbivore favored by gourmets and sailors; the loggerhead; and the hawksbill -- still heave themselves ashore at night in a physically exhausting struggle against gravity and loose sand to lay their eggs and then return to the sea. Hutchinson Island, Hobe Sound, and Canaveral National Seashore are among the prime nesting beaches for green, leatherback, and loggerhead turtles. Hawksbill turtles now only visit beaches in the Keys and the southern part of the peninsula.

ARGUABLY THE STATE'S MOST ENDEARING ANIMAL, THE PLACID WEST Indian manatee, weighing up to 1,000 pounds, congregate during the winter in warm tidal lagoons, canals, freshwater springs, and power plant outflows. Popular winter viewing sites include Blue Springs State Park near Orange City, the Florida Power and Light Company's Manatee Observation Center at Riviera Beach, the Tampa Electric Manatee Viewing Center, and Lee County Manatee Park in Fort Myers. But manatees graze on aquatic vegetation in many of the peninsula's warm, protected waterways throughout the year. Indeed, the greatest threat to the state's estimated 2,000 manatees comes from power boat propellers that kill or maim them. In an effort to protect the species, the state has struggled for years to regulate power boats in manatee zones.

Loss of their habitat to development and cars and trucks speeding along the scenic Overseas Highway remain major threats to the diminutive Key deer, found only on the Lower Keys. Nearly hunted to extinction by 1955, the Key deer population now stands at 400 animals, primarily found in a wildlife refuge on Big Pine and No Name Keys.

IMPORTANT THOUGH WETLANDS are to Florida and all its citizens, the state's uplands remain among its most distinctive and ecologically significant areas. Florida's wet and dry hardwood hammocks are irreplaceable climax forests in a sea of sand and water. Its fire-dependent longleaf pine flatwoods and sand pine scrub are vital to recharge of the aquifers that provide the peninsula's drinking water. Florida's scrub is an isolated eastern remnant of a plant community that once stretched in a band from Southern California across southwest Texas and northern Mexico. Occupying fast-draining sand ridges of the coast and inland, the scrub hosts the little scrub jay, the gopher tortoise, the eastern indigo snake, sand skink, and several endangered plants.

Pockets of these pine forests are preserved, among other places, in the Apalachicola National Forest, also famous for its wildflowers and the largest nesting population of red-cockaded woodpeckers in the state; in the Ocala National Forest, site of the largest pocket of scrub in Florida and numerous springs with crystal clear water; in Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Jupiter; and at Kennedy Space Center.

Habitat preservation and protection from human predation remain the surest ways to preserve biodiversity and aid endangered species, as the recovery of the alligator and bald eagle and the gradual increase in several other populations have shown. Although some, like the panther, may require extensive human management, most plants and animals, given proper habitat and security, can flourish even in the shadow of our most advanced technologies. But if those species are to maintain the genetic variability essential to their survival, they need to be geographically linked and not isolated in discrete parks and preserves. Establishing those links will require rethinking the way we design our communities and live with wild plants and animals. That is the challenge of the next millennium.