**Read the recently released report on the educational programs at Barr Hammock - Ledwith Prairie Preserve**

CTF collaborated with the Office of Greenways and Trails, the Forest Management Trust, the Florida National Scenic Trail Association, and the University of Florida to submit a grant application to the Florida Forever program to protect an ecological corridor between Camp Blanding and the Osceola National Forest. In February 2004, the 153,000-acre corridor was listed on the state's Florida Forever land acquisition "A" list by the Governor and the Cabinet. In January 2005, the "A" projects were re-ranked, but the Camp Blanding to Osceola National Forest Ecological Greenway remained on the "A" list. Land acquisition agents are still negotiating with landowners to acquire the greenway.

A significant portion of the corridor is working forestland. CTF received $1,000 from the highly competitive Kodak American Greenways Fund to identify critical gaps in the corridor and the University of Florida's GEOPLAN Center assisted with the identification.

The Greenway is included within several conservation plans: it is a Critical Linkage within the Florida Ecological Greenways Network, which is a state adopted plan to protect large-connected landscapes; it contains Strategic Habitat Conservation Areas for several species identified by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; and it is a conservation lands acquisition project within the Florida Forever program. Completing the Greenway would protect an ecological network of over 1 million acres that would connect two of the five major populations of the Florida black bear, a state listed species. Other species that would benefit include the red-cockaded woodpecker, wood stork, and eastern indigo snake, which are all federal listed species, and other species of conservation interest including gopher tortoise, Sherman's fox squirrel, swallow-tailed kite, and various Neotropical migrant bird species. In addition, this area was also host to a successful reintroduction potential study for the Florida panther conducted in the early 1990s, and the Greenway could help secure a large conservation landscape suitable for panther reintroduction in the future.

The Greenway is also the most critical gap in a proposed 200-mile long and 1.5 million acre network of federal and state conservation lands from the Wekiva River basin and Ocala National Forest near Orlando to Osceola National Forest and Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in north Florida and southeast Georgia. The Greenway project lies on the edge of the Jacksonville metropolitan area and includes road-frontage along US 301. This area is in imminent danger from development. It is imperative that land within the areas most threatened by development be protected soon while parcel sizes are still large and before formal development plans are proposed.

The Greenway is located in northeast Florida split between Duval, Clay, Baker, and Bradford counties. The corridor project area connects the Osceola National Forest, Raiford Wildlife Management Area, Jennings State Forest, and Camp Blanding Military Site.

Project Descriptions

• Ocala National Forest to Osceola National Forest Ecological Greenway (O2O)

  Click here to view our new O2O Brochure.

  This project aims to protect the conservation land gap between the Ocala and the Osceola National Forest and will protect a wildlife corridor connecting large conservation lands in Florida. Completing this corridor will greatly benefit various fragmentation-sensitive species and will help protect several important watersheds. (Click here to read portions of a report written by Peggy Carr and Paul Zwick of the University of Florida about O2O.)

  One species in particular, the black bear, will have its habitat further connected as a result of the O2O Corridor. Click here to read more about the distribution of the Florida Balck Bear.

  A very critical component of the O2O Corridor is the Camp Blanding Military Site and Osceola National Forest in north Florida, called the Camp Blanding to Osceola National Forest Ecological Greenway.

• Matanzas to Ocala National Forest Corridor Project (M2O)

  CTF is working with the North Florida Land Trust to protect a functional landscape linkage/corridor between the Ocala National Forest (over 500,000 acres) in Central Florida and the Matanzas State Forest/Faver-Dykes State Park/Pellicer Creek Conservation Corridor. This group of protected areas is approximately 15,000 acres in size and is located on the East Coast of Florida. The path of this proposed linkage would transverse through the remaining undeveloped timberlands/wetlands between Federal and State protected areas.

  The objective is to place a large landscape-scale corridor connecting the Matanzas State Forest to the Ocala National Forest on the State of Florida's proposed acquisition list and apply for other funding from both local and federal sources and ultimately acquire all parcels within the project's boundary.

• Ocala National Forest to Goethe State Forest Corridor Project (O2G)

  The goal of the project is to protect a landscape corridor that extends from the Ocala National Forest in Marion County, through a portion of Gilchrist and Alachua Counties, to the Goethe State Forest in Levy County. The northern portion of the corridor contains prairie, wetlands, and longleaf pine habitat; the middle portion is primarily working rural lands, while the southern portion contains some of the best remaining natural sandhill and scrub habitat in Florida. CTF has already helped protect two parcels totaling about 2,500 acres within the corridor: Price's Scrub and the Lochloosa Nature Preserve.