Everglades Headwaters Conservation Partnership: Final Environmental Assessment for the Establishment of the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge and Conservation Area

The Kissimmee River Basin in south-central Florida is a unique and biologically diverse landscape that is home to rare and unique habitats and wildlife found nowhere else, and an agricultural way of life that is slowly disappearing. With Florida’s population expected to double to 36 million from 2010 to 2060 (Zwick and Carr 2006) and many major development projects in the works, the time is now to conserve what is left. In 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) helped initiate discussions to form the Greater Everglades Partnership Initiative with a broad array of partners to begin collaborating on the best and most cost-effective ways to achieve conservation across the landscape. This partnership approach is being advanced as a means to collaboratively conserve wildlife and habitats, to protect corridors linking established conservation lands, and to conserve a working cattle ranching landscape and heritage. The Service will contribute and collaborate with a long list of current agencies and organizations already working to conserve this landscape by establishing a new national wildlife refuge and conservation area.