FEGN2021

The Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) identifies and prioritizes opportunities to protect large, intact landscapes important for conserving Florida’s biodiversity and ecosystem services, and serves as a backbone for biodiversity and ecosystem protection efforts in Florida. An important goal of the FEGN is to protect a functionally connected network of public and private conservation lands from the tip of south Florida to the tip of the Florida panhandle while also potentially providing functional connectivity to conservation lands in Georgia and Alabama. Inclusion in the FEGN means the area is either part of a large landscape-scale “hub”, or an ecological corridor connecting two or more hubs. Hubs indicate core landscapes that are large enough to maintain populations of wide-ranging or fragmentation-sensitive species including black bear or panther and areas that are more likely to support functional ecosystem services. Highest priorities indicate the most significant hubs and corridors in relation to completing a functionally connected statewide ecological network, but all priority levels have conservation value. FEGN Priorities 1, 2, and 3 are the most important for protecting a ecologically functional connected statewide network of public and private conservation lands, and these three priority levels (P1, P2, and P3) are now called the Florida Wildlife Corridor as per the Florida Wildlife Corridor legislation passed and signed into law by the Florida Legislature and Governor and 2021, which makes protection of these wildlife and ecological hubs and corridors a high priority as part of a strategic plan for Florida’s future. To accomplish this goal, we need robust state, federal, and local conservation land protection program funding for Florida Forever, Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, Natural Resources Conservation Service easements and incentives, federal Land and Waters Conservation Fund, payments for ecosystem services, etc. For more information https://conservation.dcp.ufl.edu/fegnproject/ Data download link