Planning to Protect the Florida Wildlife Corridor 3.0
Payment for Ecosystem Services
September 2, 2026
What if Florida’s farms, forests, wetlands, and working lands were compensated for the services they already provide — clean water, flood protection, wildlife habitat, and more?
Payment for Ecosystem Services: A Conservation Tool for Florida’s Future is the first session in our three-part series on Planning to Protect the Florida Wildlife Corridor 3.0. This free 2-hour webinar brings together representatives from agriculture, conservation, and finance communities to discuss Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), a promising yet underutilized tool in conservation that recognizes that Florida’s farms, forests, wetlands, and working lands can be valued not just for what they produce, but for what they protect.
Dr. Laila Racevskis (The Balmoral Group) explores why PES is a critical tool and provide an overview of programs in Florida today. Parker Hall (Hall’s Tiger Bay Ranch), a fourth-generation rancher in DeSoto County, shares a landowner perspective on the importance of PES and the intersection between agriculture and conservation. Chad Ellis (Texas Agricultural Land Trust) highlights national grassland carbon sequestration programs and provide a look at options for Florida, including upcoming work at Archbold’s Buck Island Ranch. Dr. Thomas Eason (Property and Environmental Research Center) shares lessons learned from PERC’s efforts to advance voluntary, market-based, and property rights-grounded conservation across the country, including a look at the Paradise Valley Brucellosis Compensation Fund.
From water quality credits and flood mitigation to groundbreaking programs like the Florida panther PES initiative, we unpack how innovative funding mechanisms can forge new partnerships between landowners, governments, and the private sector to keep working lands working, and wild lands wild, for generations to come.
This event has been approved for the following professional certification credits for those who attend the live webinar:
American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP CM 2, #9331522)
Florida Bar (2.5 General CLE #2607406N)
Certified Floodplain Managers (1 CEC)
Florida Landscape Architects (2 DBPR Credits #0015986)
Florida Certified Environmental Health Professionals (2 Contact Hours/0.2 CEUs)