Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation receives one of its largest financial gifts

TAMPA, Fla. - The Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation announced it received one of its largest financial gifts.

"It's significant because it is helping us to be able to accelerate the pace of conservation and continue to advocate for protection of the Florida Wildlife Corridor," the foundation's CEO Mallory Dimmitt said.

Clearwater's residents and environmental philanthropists Stu and Rebecca Sjouwerman made the $2.5 million donation. In a statement, Rebecca Sjouwerman said, "Stu and I recognize that certain Corridor lands are in urgent need of protection lest they be lost to development forever."
 

"Florida continues to grow rapidly, and so we want to keep pace on the conservation side with the growth that is happening," Dimmitt said.

Current projections point to the Florida Wildlife Corridor -- a statewide network of nearly 18 million acres of connected lands and waters stretching from the keys to the panhandle – losing approximately half a million acres of land by 2030, according to the foundation.

Birds migrating to a new home 

"They want to motivate others to also contribute to helping to protect the Wildlife Corridor: Other animal lovers out there, people who just love nature and conservation," Dimmitt said of the Sjouwermans. "They're hoping that their gift will bring others to contribute to the protection of the corridor."

So what's the $2.5 million going towards?

"It's going to be used for some of the critical linkages in the corridor. These are places that are really narrow where the geography of conservation lands is being squeezed by development on all sides. Some of these places are critical that we protect within this decade, and so their gift is really meant to help us focus in on a couple of those bottlenecks, relatively close to the Tampa Bay area so that we can move them into conservation status, and then we won't risk the sort of break in the larger wildlife corridor," Dimmitt said.
 

Florida's landscape on a sunny day 

One of these narrow passageways is in the Brooksville area in Hernando County. Connecting this land will allow animals to continue on their traditional migratory pathways, Dimmitt told FOX 13.

Earlier this month, the governor signed a bill extending the Sun Trail Network, so people can access the Corridor through the trails.

A big boost came two years ago when the legislature passed, and the governor signed the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act of 2021. It cleared the way for some $400 million to be spent on acquiring environmentally sensitive land.

"It's fantastic to have the momentum from this gift, the momentum from our state legislature, and the funding that's been available since the passage of the Act," Dimmitt said.