Towards a Florida Ecological Network

In the past 50 years, Florida has lost over 4.3 million hectares of natural communities including more than 50% of its wetlands and upland communities, including longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests and oak scrub that harbour much of the state's biological diversity (Myers 1990), and the loss of rural lands is continuing at a rate of over 50000 hectares per year (Matus 1999). Wide-ranging species such as the Florida panther (Felis concolor coryi) and Florida black bear (Ursus americanus floridanus) and other fragmentationsensitive species have suffered serious declines, and Florida ranks third among states in the United States in the number of federally listed endangered and threatened species. However, efforts to protect Florida's natural heritage and biological diversity started to gain momentum in the 1970s with the beginning of an integrated land acquisition programme that expanded into a ten year, 3 billion dollar programme in 1990. Concurrently, conservation science evolved to support large-scale, integrated plans to protect biological diversity and other natural resources (Harris 1984; Noss and Cooperrider 1994; Soulé and Terborgh 1999a). Since the reports of Wright et al. (1933) and Wright and Thompson (1934) there has been a growing awareness that typical protected areas such as national parks are often not sufficient to protect viable populations of sensitive species and biological diversity as a whole (Noss and Harris 1986; Harris et al. 1996a, b).