Wild Green Minute
About
The Wild Green Minute is a short fact file segment exploring Florida's wildlife and wild places.
Produced in collaboration with WKGC-FM Panama City, each episode features one of Florida's wild places, organisms, or other natural phenomena. From river otters to Spanish moss, listen in for a quick bite of natural history.
Scroll down to hear past episodes and learn more!
Episode 10: Virginia Opossum
When we think of marsupials, weird mammals that carry their young around in a pouch, we usually picture the kangaroos, wombats, bilbies, and other charismatic Australian species. However, North America is blessed with the presence of one native marsupial: the Virginia opossum!
They typically give birth to eight or nine infants, all of which could together fit into a teaspoon. The tiny newborns climb into Mom’s pouch and remain there until after about two and a half months when they have grown enough to ride around on her back.
Virginia opossums are widespread across the US, Mexico, and southern Canada. Gray haired and cat-like, they have a bald, prehensile tail, which they can use to anchor themselves in trees or carry things, and prehensile rear toes!
Virginia opossums are famous for responding to predators by pretending to die on the spot, or “play possum”.
The trick can seem clever, but sometimes their acting skills could use a little improvement. Once, when I was a kid growing up in North Florida, my dog caught and brought me a live opossum which had, in light of the threat, faked its death. Deciding to scare my mother with the animal, I carried it home. Along the way, the possum miraculously recovered in my arms, looked me in the eyes, and resumed its act three times before we made it back to the Barker residence.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker. All opossums involved in this story were safely released immediately afterwards.
Episode 9: Econfina Creek
The Econfina Creek is Panama City’s main source of water. It was named for a now-collapsed natural crossing which was present until the early 1800’s: the word Econfina is a combination of the Creek words “ekana”, which means earth, and “fina”, which means bridge.
Primarily springfed, it has eleven named springs along its 26 mile path, including the first magnitude Gainer Springs Group.
To tube the Econfina is to be delighted by high green walls of ferns and moss and the springs’ cool clear waters. Take a break at Jim’s Hole, a small spring which can only be reached by water, and watch the little, freckled, blue-skinned musk turtles emerge from their hiding places as they become used to your presence.
Karst windows provide hikers with jagged windows into the underground rivers which supply the springs, and the Econfina itself is surrounded by sinkholes and limestone caves. One of these caves is home to a strange creature - a snail found nowhere else, which makes its living exclusively by eating the remains of wood carried into the tunnels by nesting beavers.
All along the sides, plants unusual outside of the Appalachian Mountains grow. It is one of the rare spots in Florida where mountain laurel still blooms, left behind when the rest of the species moved north at the end of the last ice age.
It’s amazing to think that this lost world provides us with our water and is only twenty minutes from the center of Panama City!
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 8: Longleaf Savanna
The Florida panhandle contains some of the biggest remaining areas of longleaf pine savanna, a habitat type whose plant community defends itself from oaky invaders using nature’s hottest weapon: fire!
Longleaf pines are large trees with extremely flammable needles and thick, burn-resistant bark that allows them to survive understory fires unscathed. By dropping their needles, they encourage frequent, low-intensity fires that limit the growth of competitor species like live oaks and titi. Longleaf pines actually require fire to reproduce - their waxy cones remain shut until heat from regular fires allows them to open.
Accompanying species like saw palmettos and wiregrass also rely on their fire resistance to edge out competition, and promote it with their flammable leaves. The little fires created by longleaf pines and their companions simultaneously reduce competition and ensure a limited fuel load by clearing underbrush. When humans suppress low intensity fires, however, it can lead to invasion by less fire-friendly species, habitat degradation, and larger and more damaging wildfires.
Every few years, land managers conduct controlled burns on protected areas to prevent these problems and restore our native longleaf savanna habitats.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 7: Sea Turtle Nesting
Sea turtle nesting season is underway! Every year, the ocean giants begin crawling onto Florida’s beaches to lay their eggs in March, and hatchlings emerge between August and October. Sea turtle mothers will often lay over a hundred ping-pong ball-like eggs in a single nest, carefully bury them, then return to the sea. After that, the babies are on their own. Or at least, that’s how it was for most of their history. Now that our homes and cities have grown along the coasts, it’s up to us to be good neighbors to our aquatic friends. During the nesting phase, obstructions on the beach like chairs can confuse and divert mother turtles seeking to nest. They can also fall into large holes and burn themselves on smoldering campfires, so it’s important that we clean up after ourselves by stacking chairs, filling in holes, and extinguishing fires before leaving the beach every evening. After nightfall, sea turtles can become confused by bright lights which can drive adults to abandon nesting attempts, and, later in the season, even cause new hatchlings to walk inland, to certain death, instead rushing towards the relative safety of the gulf. The FWC recommends everyone on sea turtle nesting sites follow the three golden rules of lighting:
- Keep it LOW: mount outdoor lighting fixtures as low to the ground as possible, and keep bulbs at the lowest wattage possible, to achieve their needed purpose.
- Keep it LONG: lamps, flashlights, and bulbs should produce light with a long wavelength, which is less distracting to turtles. This means amber, orange, or red colored lights are ideal.
- Keep it SHIELDED: Try to keep outdoor light fixtures directed downwards, towards the ground, and shield bulbs from leaking confusing light pollution towards the beach.
By following these simple rules we can all be better neighbors to the amazing turtles that call the gulf home.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida during sea turtle nesting season, which occurs annually from March to October.
Episode 6: Rice's Whale
Many of our animal neighbors are on the small side - the Panhandle teams with little fish, palm-sized frogs, and birds that only weigh a few pounds, but today’s feature is for one of the biggest animals in the world, the Rice’s Whale. Also called America’s Whale by researchers referencing the local nature of its range, the Rice’s Whale can grow over 41 feet long and is only found in and around US waters on the gulf coast.
The process an animal goes through to be recognized by science can be long and winding, and though Rice’s Whales have been seen off and on by passing sailors for centuries, they were only definitively described as a distinct species in 2021 when one unfortunate individual washed up in south Florida after choking on a piece of plastic, providing the holotype, or reference specimen, which is usually required to describe a new species.
Named for a researcher who first raised the possibility of their existence to science after a different individual beached itself a few decades ago in Panacea, the Rice’s whale is the only species of baleen whale that resides in the Gulf year-round. Filter feeders, they sweep the water for krill and small fish, which they filter with their long, hair-like teeth called baleen. It’s amazing to look out on the water from Panama City Beach and know that, just a little ways out on the water, giants swim.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
