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Joe Budd WMA

Wildlife

Joe Budd has a variety of wildlife indigenous to the flatwoods and sandy upland areas of panhandle Florida. The slope forests are home to the rare Apalachicola dusky salamander. Alligators, gopher tortoises, white-tailed deer, and wild turkey are common. Joe Budd has excellent habitat for both the federally threatened Eastern indigo snake and the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, although neither of these species has been documented on the area.

The combination fishing pier/wildlife observation platform at Lake Talquin, a Great Florida Birding Trail site, is an excellent spot to observe wading birds, osprey, and perhaps bald eagles. A variety of warblers-including the black-and-white warbler, prothonotary warbler, palm warbler, and Kentucky warbler-may be heard in the pine-oak forests during spring and fall migration.

Wildlife Spotlight: Apalachicola Dusky Salamander

In 1989, D. Bruce Means and Alvin A. Karlin described a new species of salamander (Desmognathus apalachicolae), commonly known as the Apalachicola dusky salamander. This species is found only in the deep, moist ravines south of the Fall Line in the Ochlockonee, Apalachicola-Flint-Chattahoochee, and upper Choctawhatchee river systems in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Means and Karlin speculate that the Apalachicola dusky salamander may have evolved from a population of salamanders isolated in the ravines during climate changes following the Pleistocene.