The sixty-person audience gathered at the Cedar Key Library on Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 5PM was treated to the premiere Public Broadcasting System showing of the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition film, shown later that evening on WUSF, Channel 28. Blountstown-based independent filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus greeted the group and introduced the four individuals who traveled the 1000 mile, 100 day expedition: conservation biologist Joe Guthrie now based at Archbold Biological Station in Venice, Florida; seventh-generation Floridian Mallory Lykes Dimmitt now working with the Nature Conservancy in Colorado; conservation photographer and eighth-generation Floridian Carlton Ward, Jr., who has worked for the Smithsonian; and Stoltzfus himself, a 30-year photographer who has, since 2000, devoted his work to Florida. 
Elam Stoltzfus speaks at the Cedar Key Library presentation.
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The expedition`s and the film`s goal, reported Stoltzfus, is "to continue the dialog regarding the wilderness corridor." Wildlife corridors are connected expanses of land which provide wildlife with sufficient habitat to forage, procreate, shelter themselves, and thus survive in increasingly populated and developed places, such as Florida. Such a corridor, Stoltzfus stressed, is and must continue to involve ranchers, other independent land owners, state agencies orchestrating transportation, wildlife, forests, parks, and water, and conservancy groups; such corridors would be minimal or severely compromised without the involvement and commitment of all. The film comments that "cowboys" and "treehuggers" ultimately want the same things: clean water, clean air, sustainable wildlife, and open recreational areas. The 100-mile trek began at Flamingo in the Everglades National Park in South Florida and ended 100 days later in Okefenokee in the north. Through the Everglades, Big Cypress Country, the Everglades headwaters, the St. Johns River, Ocala`s forests and springs, Osceola, Suwannee, and Okefenokee the expedition kayaked, hiked, and portaged. 
Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition Map
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Among the film`s many highlights which provoked audible gasps from the audience were: - provocative footage of prowling alligators, slithering snakes, diving birds, wading birds, foraging foxes, raccoons, and white-tailed deer, and coyotes;
- interviews with luminary photographer Clyde Butcher and other conservationists;
- the track of a collared 195-poound Florida black bear, named M34, roaming freely about the state for eight weeks and covering 500 miles foiled only trying to cross Interstate 4;
- snapshots of Florida bear and panther tracks in close proximity;
- expedition folks slogging chest-high through swamps of obscuring water hyacinths and other vegetation;
- landscapes and waterscapes varying from the South Florida mangrove swamps, to the Central Florida underground springs, to the open plains and scrub of the Lake Wale Ridge. Leading sponsors of the expedition were the National Geographic Society, the Everglades Foundation, and Nell Ward. The film was funded by Mosaic, whose "mission is to help the world grow the food it needs." The information-laden, photograph-punctuated, incredibly colorful, and worthwhile http://www.floridawildlifecorridor.org website contains a more complete list of the expedition`s sponsors and partners. The site further identifies with numbers the story points on the map shown with this article. The film is scheduled to air on PBS stations throughout Florida beginning April 1; your local listing should contain airing specifics. The book Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition, was available for purchase at the presentation`s end. Stoltzfus received a rousing applause from a grateful, fully entertained, more informed audience. |
