Payment for Ecosystem Services: A Conservation Tool for Florida’s Future
September 2, 2026 | 12:00 – 2:00 PM ET

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?

Join us on September 2nd for Payment for Ecosystem Services: A Conservation Tool for Florida’s Future – 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) will explore 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, will share a landowner perspective on the importance of PES and the intersection between agriculture and conservation. Chad Ellis (Texas Agricultural Land Trust) will highlight national grassland carbon sequestration programs and provide a look at options for Florida, including upcoming work at Archbold’s Buck Island Ranch. 

From water quality credits and flood mitigation to groundbreaking programs like the Florida panther PES initiative, we’ll 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), and Florida Landscape Architects (2 DBPR Credits #0015986).

Beyond the Corridor: Transect Planning and Connectivity
September 23, 2026 | 12:00 – 2:00 PM ET

Wildlife connectivity doesn’t stop at the Florida Wildlife Corridor boundaries. How communities plan and grow in the surrounding landscape impacts both conservation and community resilience.

Hear from four leading voices working at the intersection of habitat connectivity and planning.  Isabella Guttuso Browne (University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning) will highlight the importance of planning beyond the boundaries of the Corridor in the often-overlooked transitional zones between urban and rural areas. Galina Tachieva (DPZ) will address the importance of context and scale in applying the urban to rural transect, common transect violations, and opportunities for wilderness in cities.  Dr. Jay Exum (Exum Associates) will build on the success of the urban to rural transect by exploring how ecological values can be woven into the transect, providing targeted actions and design considerations to protect wildlife, communities, and the landscapes that connect them. Kylie Paul (Center for Large Landscape Conservation) will highlight the Center’s recently released report on integrating wildlife habitat into local government planning that provides case studies, recommendations, and resources for municipalities.

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, #9331559), Florida Bar (2.5 General CLE # 2607457N), Certified Floodplain Managers (1 CEC), and Florida Landscape Architects (2 DBPR Credits #0015987).

Connectivity Across Scales: Tools and Concepts for the Urban-to-Rural Transect
October 28, 2026 | 12:00 – 2:00 PM ET

Planning decisions made along the continuum from our urban centers to our rural lands and wilderness can have ripple effects that impact the entire system.  

The University of Florida’s Center for Landscape Conservation Planning (UF CLCP) and its partners are connecting the dots between the Florida Wildlife Corridor and Florida Ecological Greenways Network to the communities that surround them.  

Join us for an exclusive update from University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning researchers working on the front lines of corridor science. They’ll share emerging findings, new insights, and what their work means for the future of Florida’s wildlife, wild lands, and the communities connected to them.

Isabella Guttuso Browne (UF CLCP) will introduce the science and design underpinnings of the transect concept, exploring how the Center uses it as a framework for addressing planning challenges across urban to rural landscapes and why it is relevant to the protection of the Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN), Florida Wildlife Corridor, and other green networks. Sarah Lockhart (UF CLCP) will introduce the concept of multiple scales of ecological connectivity, walking attendees through examples of ways connectivity in Florida extends beyond the Florida Wildlife Corridor, from the local level to statewide, regional, and beyond, across urban to rural to natural places. Michael O’Brien (UF CLCP) will demonstrate how the Florida Ecological Connectivity (EcoCon) planning viewer can be used as a practical planning tool for rural-to-urban connectivity, highlighting available datasets for places within and outside the FEGN and Florida Wildlife Corridor. 

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, # 9331844), Florida Bar (2.5 General CLE # 2607653N)
Certified Floodplain Managers (1 CEC), and Florida Landscape Architects (2 DBPR Credits #0015988).