The new Design Guidelines for Corridor Compatible Communities outline best practices for developing new communities near the 18-million-acre Florida Wildlife Corridor to support the habitats and connectivity needed to protect Florida’s wildlife. While focused on large master-planned communities, guidelines in the 153-page book can also be applied to urban areas, even those as developed as Pinellas County, the state’s most densely populated county.
“There is one guideline that everyone in the state, if they’re looking at their property as a piece of the natural system, can follow: plant Florida native plants and create habitat, not just decorate their home with landscaping,” said Rebecca Bradley, founding principal of Cadence, the landscape architecture firm that authored the design guideline document published by the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation. “Otherwise, we’re just planting sod, and that has a huge impact in our state because of all the single-family homes.”
Even urban areas can support wildlife using the core principles of the corridor guidelines:
- Biodiversity by protecting or creating natural systems that support a wide variety of species
- Resilience by protecting and mimicking natural systems that resist damage and recover from climate hazards like hurricanes
- Connection by prioritizing ways for wildlife to move, find mates and then disperse while minimizing habitat fragmentation.
“Our yards may not be as big, but we can create ‘microscapes’ inside urban settings,” she said. “This is key – we can rewild urbanity, and we can also create communities that are compatible with our rural and natural areas. We really do need both of these things in our state, and there are many things in this document for urban communities to utilize, and for homeowners’ associations to think about, that will contribute something positive to our environment.”…