Florida has 18 million + residents and 80 million + tourists that visit our state each year. The great majority of this growth has occurred within my relatively short life. If projections are correct, in about the same number of years our population will jump to 36 million and several hundred million tourists will yearly need accommodations. Remembering that a great part of Florida is a water bounded peninsula without relative connectivity adjacent landmasses or wildlife populations - you can begin to picture likely wildlife sustainability issues that may emerge as the landscape is further sliced and diced by many new roads, homes and businesses.

We have to account for this now and work diligently to build our roads, homes and businesses to incorporate natural habitat and wildlife. As this year (2006) comes to a close there are a great many plans being floated to develop a slew of new major road corridors – the State Department of Transportation along with a host of regional transportation planning entities are laying plans for many miles of new roads. Each new road will enlarge accessibility to previously less accessible land and with the easy access will follow many more homes and businesses.
Presently the lists of environmental Criteria that must be considered as these road corridors are pondered include the following:
• The presence of and potential impacts on conservation lands currently under public or private ownership or proposed for ownership;
• The presence of and potential impacts on surface waters including Outstanding Florida Waters, Aquatic preserves, Class 1 and Class 2 Waters, springs and spring sheds;
• The presence of and potential impacts on coastal and marine environments, including mangrove swamps and coastal salt marshes;
• The presence of and potential impacts on wetlands, including marine/salt marsh, bay heads, riverine swamps, pitcher plant prairies, and seepage slopes;
• The presence of and potential impacts on threatened and endangered habitat, including specific high-priority areas defined by the Florida Natural Areas Inventory and other partners;
• Potential air quality impacts; and
• Potential energy consumption impacts.

Though a variety of specific habitat types are mentioned, it is interesting to me that wildlife per se has to be “threatened or endangered” to be generally factored into the road planning equations. As the basic calculations are money driven, the heat is on minimizing wildlife avoidance or mitigation issues. Species that are not threatened or endangered today, for example the Florida Burrowing Owl, may not rise high enough in the road building avoidance and mitigation calculus to merit concern or design alterations.

Even with well intended and designed review systems in place such as ETDM and PD&E the magnitude of road building planned for the limited Florida landscape presents Florida Wildlife with a daunting future.