#endangered
6 posts tagged.
Key Deer Refuge — The 30-Inch Whitetail That Only Lives in the Lower Keys
Big Pine Key has a deer that stands 30 inches at the shoulder, weighs 50 pounds, and exists nowhere else on Earth. About 700 of them. Down from 50 in the 1950s. You can watch them for free at dusk from a dirt road off Watson Blvd.
Florida Panther Tracking — Fakahatchee, Big Cypress, and the Cat You Probably Won't See
Roughly 200 wild Florida panthers exist, almost all of them in a 100-mile arc of swamp between Naples and the Tamiami Trail. Your odds on any single dawn drive are under 5%. Here's how to do it right anyway.
Florida's Whooping Cranes — A Reintroduction at the Edge of Memory
Roughly 14 whooping cranes are left in Florida — the remnant of a 22-year ultralight-led reintroduction that peaked at 110 birds in 2008 and then collapsed. It's North America's tallest bird, and the state's most ambitious failed-but-instructive species rescue.
Lake Kissimmee Snail Kite — Florida's Specialist Raptor at the Headwaters of the Everglades
There are roughly 3,000 Florida snail kites left, and they all live here — in a chain of lakes most Floridians have never paddled. Lake Kissimmee is the easiest place to see one without chartering a boat. Here's how to do it right.
North Atlantic Right Whale — Florida's Winter Calving Coast
Fewer than 360 North Atlantic right whales remain on Earth, and every winter the pregnant females swim 1,500 miles to give birth off Amelia Island. Here's how to glimpse one from shore without getting near it — federal law starts at 1,500 feet.
Smalltooth Sawfish in Charlotte Harbor — The Endangered Prehistoric-Looking Fish You Should Never Touch
The smalltooth sawfish is the only Florida elasmobranch on the federal Endangered list — a 14-foot ray with a chainsaw nose that lives almost nowhere on Earth except Charlotte Harbor and the Everglades fringe. If you ever hook one, federal law is one sentence: cut the line, don't lift, don't pose.