Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, Inc.

Among the wide array of conservation and outdoor programs insupported by The Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, the following five initiatives are the most urgent:

• Getting Kids Back to Nature,
• Combatting Invasives,
• Restoring Our Reefs,
• Conserving Wildlife, and
• Preserving Our Outdoor Heritage.

The nonprofit Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida operates essentially as a statewide community foundation for conservation. In addition to charitable gifts and other revenues that we raise and manage, we administer a number of funds on behalf of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and other public and private organizations. We work with those entities to use those funds for conservation and youth outdoor education programs and projects across Florida. We have also established two permanent funds, the Florida Conservation Endowment and the Children and Nature Endowment, for which we seek outright and planned charitable gifts from individuals, foundations, corporations, and others.

The Foundation is organized to both accept major and principal gifts as well as to manage and distribute funds to worthy conservation and outdoor education projects around the state. As a "citizens support organization" for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, we can draw on the expertise of that agency and other partners to ensure our funds are generating the best possible conservation outcomes.

We continue to work on the five conservation initiatives outlined above (see our uploaded annual reports). Our funding has allowed for doubling of the most promising program for removing invasive pythons from South Florida; we are also a principal funder of current work rescuing corals vulnerable to stony coral tissue-loss disease (SCTLD), which in four years has decimated 22 species of stony coral along the 360-mile Florida reef tract. These corals will be bred to maximize their genetic diversity and resistance to SCTLD before being replanted on the reef by the tens of thousands. We remain Florida's largest private funder of outdoor education for youth, women, minorities and families, helping acquire and manage wildlife lands open to the public, and helping provide 230,000 Florida children and teens with outdoor experiences every year. We are also the principal funder of captive breeding of North America's rarest bird, the Florida grasshopper sparrow, whose wild population is down to 30 nesting pairs. Captive breeding offers the only true chance for this bird to survive. We have also funded the startup of 18 new critical wildlife areas that protect important nesting colonies of terns, plovers, egrets, herons, woodstorks and other colonial nesting birds. Other species whose conservation we are funding include Florida panthers, Florida black bears, gopher tortoises, indigo and other rare snake species, the Florida bonneted bat, manatees and sea turtles. We are also a major funder on research and management of Florida's 700 freshwater springs, many of which suffer from invasive species and nutrient pollution. We also, when needed, raise funds for hurricane and other disaster relief.