POLK COUNTY, Fla. — For the past year, Tampa Bay 28 reporter Michael Paluska's been trekking deep into the Florida Wildlife Corridor, highlighting efforts by conservation photographers, non-profits, and everyday people to save Florida's last wild places.
A wildlife photographer once told me Florida's beauty is subtle. It "whispers to you" — not in a grandiose way like the Rocky Mountains — but with simplicity.
That photographer is William Freund, the founder of the fStopFoundation. We profiled Freund and his son Max in 2023, highlighting the duo's remote field camera traps to film, track, and help save the Florida panther.
"This area here, it's so quiet I hear the tree squeaking, the wind rustling through. We're the only ones out here," Tampa Bay 28 reporter Michael Paluska said to Chelsea Wisner.
"Yep, surely, yeah, this is a slice of Old Florida that is becoming harder to find," Wisner, the Director of Land Protection for Conservation Florida, said.
In August, Paluska toured another recently protected property, AP Ranch, in Highlands County.
For this report, Wisner took us on a tour of Eagle Haven, a private ranch in Polk County spanning 3,500 acres. The property is named after all the bald eagles whose homes were nearly destroyed for profit.
"In 2020, we learned that this piece of property was maybe going up for sale, and so through partnerships, we were able to identify a conservation buyer, and that's Arnie and Lauren Bellini, and through their generosity, they bought this piece of land and bought us the time to protect it forever," Wisner said. "Aside from the fact that we're paving land and taking away opportunity for our aquifer to recharge and for wildlife habitat, you know, we're also taking away the character that makes Florida, Florida," Wisner said.
Billboards line the cattle trail, showing where the past and present collide — eerie images frozen in time show what could have been.
An hour away, Paluska hiked through a similar success story at the Bellini Preserve in Polk County. If developers had their way, Paluska could be standing in someone's front yard. Now, a preserve on the banks of Lake Marion is open to the public. It too was saved by the Bellini family, just like Eagle Haven Ranch.
There are thousands of players in the world of conservation. Over the Summer, Paluska traveled to Orlando for the Corridor Connect Summit. Paluska's reporting shows the people behind the scenes.
Oftentimes, Florida is caught in a catch-22, and that's where community and non-profits have to step in.
"So sometimes the water and animals around them are protected. But if you bought this and it was your private property, if you wanted to clear it down, that'd be your choice to do that," Wisner said.
"It takes hundreds of years to grow, and it takes maybe a week for bulldozers to come in and take it all out. It's hard to think about this place being developed," Paluska said.
"Yeah, right. Here could have been this area at one point in time; it was platted for development of all sorts of different types. It was going to be a master community with golf courses, a marina, and lakefront homes. So all of this, very realistically, could have been lost forever, a big victory," Wisner said.
In February, Paluska traveled into the corridor with National Geographic Photographer George McKenzie, Jr.
Conservation Florida has protected just shy of 45,000 acres since its founding. It can take years, millions of dollars, and a dedicated staff to save just a few acres.
In 2021, when the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act passed, legislators designated 18 million acres as part of the corridor. To date, 10 million are protected. Another 8 million are opportunity areas — privately owned and at risk of purchase and possible development.
For Wisner, every acre counts.
"There's so much development coming from all different angles here that those small bridges can really provide connectivity between larger conserved landscapes," Wisner said. "It's these places, like the one that you're sitting at right now, that make us so unique and make up the heritage that all of us are fighting to protect," Wisner said.
Development in Polk County is booming, and lands that were once wild are prime targets for new master planned communities. Conservationists tell us we can't pave over everything.
This story was written and reported on-air by Michael Paluska and converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Paluska and our editorial team verify all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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