Each winter, critically endangered North Atlantic right whales swim a thousand miles to give birth in the warm waters off northeast Florida, the only known calving ground for the species.
For decades people assumed Florida’s flamingos were escapees from racetracks and zoos. New science says otherwise: the flamingo is native to Florida, and it is slowly coming back.
They are nine inches tall, stand guard on long legs, and live in burrows in the ground, not trees. In Cape Coral, thousands of burrowing owls share the neighborhood.
Down to a few dozen inbred animals in the 1990s, Florida’s state animal recovered after biologists brought in eight Texas pumas. FWC now estimates 120 to 230 adults, one of conservation’s real comebacks.
One sentence changed how the world saw the Everglades. Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s 1947 classic reframed a swamp as a river worth saving, and helped do exactly that.
The only bird species found exclusively in Florida has lived on the state’s sandy ridges for two million years. Meet the bold, brainy corvid that will land on your hand.
Every summer, thousands of sea turtles crawl onto Florida’s beaches to nest. The state hosts more loggerhead nests than anywhere else on Earth, and you can watch it happen on guided moonlight walks.
Marjorie Harris Carr spent nearly three decades fighting the Cross Florida Barge Canal and won. The 110-mile greenway that replaced it now bears her name.