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Taking Action

By working with our partners, Florida's Wildlife Legacy Initiative has identified 5 areas where we'll work for the next 3 years. The ultimate goal is to conserve our native wildlife and habitats through non-regulatory, voluntary, incentive-based actions and partnerships. Partnerships built around these areas are critical because this effort is much larger than any one agency or organization can accomplish alone.

The areas are:

• Use the Initiative to coordinate natural resource conservation within Florida;

• Focus efforts on the following habitats to achieve their long-term ecological sustainability:

• Sandhill
• Scrub
• Softwater Stream
• Spring and Spring Run
• Coral Reef
• Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (seagrass);

• Enhance or develop a tracking system for wildlife and the places they live to see if we meet our goals;

• Develop the "Cooperative Conservation Blueprint", a new GIS tool that unifies existing tools and identifies the most critical lands and waters to conserve for Florida; and

• Fill information gaps on the life history, status, trend, population, and management needs for Species of Greatest Conservation Need.

The Lake Wales Ridge includes important habitats such as scrub and sandhill and supports a suite of wildlife species; several of which have been identified as species in need of conservation in the Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy. Many of the species that occur in the uplands are fire dependent, and lightning-ignited landscape fires historically provided optimal habitat conditions for wildlife. The Initiative has helped support The Lake Wales Ridge Prescribed Fire Strike Team; an interagency project coordinated by The Nature Conservancy. This project deploys an ecosystem-wide fire strike team to restore habitat on conservation areas. The team works in concert with local conservation managers, who must provide their own burn bosses, fire management plans, burn unit plans and a partial burn crew for each burn on their property. This project is just one of many ways The Initiative is taking action within the state. The Initiative is committed to leveraging funds for conservation and working with partners for a better Florida.

You can support funding for Florida's Wildlife Legacy Initiative by joining the Teaming with Wildlife coalition. The Teaming with Wildlife coalition is comprised of more than 5,000 organizations working to prevent wildlife from becoming endangered by supporting increased state and federal funding for wildlife conservation. To learn more about Teaming with Wildlife, please visit www.teaming.com.

List of supporters: http://www.teaming.com/pdf/full_supporters_list.pdf