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 20: Torreya Trees
Torreya trees are found in nature only in and around the steepheads of the Apalachicola river. With their nearest relatives in California, Japan, and China, they represent a tiny remnant of a once much farther-reaching species, pushed south during the last ice age by the glaciers that made most of North America uninhabitable.
First described by scientists in the 1800’s, torreya trees used to grow to heights of around 60 feet, but have since suffered a catastrophic decline in both population and stature. In the mid-20th century, something swept through the isolated population, killing every reproductive-aged tree and reducing them in number from 700,000 to about 700 today. While the exact causes of the die-off are complicated and still an area of active research, it’s likely that a fungal disease was the immediate cause. The stems that can be seen today rise from remnant root stock, living long enough to photosynthesize and keep their stumps alive, but rarely long enough to reproduce and never to reach their full size.
While the species is in human cultivation and unlikely to become fully extinct any time soon, it will likely remain diminished until researchers can learn more.
You can see Torreya trees for yourself by visiting Torreya State Park near Bristol, where several are viewable by visitors!
Episode 19: North American River Otters
One animal you may be lucky enough to see throughout the Florida panhandle is the river otter!
River otters are adapted for swimming and have sleek fur, a thin body form, and a tail that makes up about a third of their total length!
They are known for their whimsical movements, flowing smoothly through the water and bobbing their long, slinky bodies over land. Extremely playful, they will wrestle and chase each other around.
Small predators, they use their sharp canines and carnassials to kill active prey, and their strong molars to crunch snails and other little armored food items.
They have a usable nictitating membrane, a third eyelid that works like goggles to allow some animals to see underwater. When the viz is too low, they instead use their long whiskers to feel around in the murky river bottom for food sources that would otherwise e hidden from hungry eyes.
River otters can be seen anywhere from springs and blackwater rivers to saltwater coastlines to city ditches and retention ponds. They are primarily active at dawn and dusk, so if you’re out at midday and want to scout for a place to watch them later, keep an eye out for their distinctive, shell-filled droppings and little, five fingered footprints.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 18: Red Wolves
We’re all familiar with coyotes, black bears, and Florida panthers, but many people don’t realize that the eastern US is also blessed with its own species of wolf, the red wolf!
Originally found throughout the southeastern US, red wolf populations declined steeply due to predator-control programs in the 20th century.
Typically smaller in stature than their better known, gray-wolf cousins, red wolves are usually a little bigger than coyotes. Similarly, they sit between gray wolves and coyotes in behavior, with gray wolves being more consistently social than reds, and coyotes less. Because of persecution during the ill-advised predator control period in American wildlife management, red wolves’ existence is now dependent on human care.
A captive breeding program established in the 1970’s has prevented the species' immediate extinction, though they still face hazards from low remaining genetic diversity and, where they exist in the wild, continued conflict with human neighbors.
They also face the threat of genetic swamping by coyote populations. When other predators were eliminated from the landscape over the last hundred years, coyotes expanded to fill in the empty space. Now that coyotes are much more numerous than they were in the past, there is a risk that they will overwhelm the tiny red wolf population by interbreeding with it, creating hybrids that become more coyote and less wolf with each generation.Â
One pair lives in the Florida panhandle, residing quietly on the island of St. Vincent, and the species can also be seen by visitors to the Tallahassee Museum, which cares for a pair in the captive breeding program.
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 17: Northern Cardinal
Northern Cardinals, also known as redbirds, are a common, beautiful, and feisty species of songbird native to the eastern US.
As their second common name suggests, male redbirds are bright, well, red, with females taking on drabber, peach-colored feathers.
Both sexes sing, using their laser gun-like call “PEW PEW PEW” to advertise their presence to other cardinals (and, incidentally, sleeping humans). They can also make a variety of other call patterns, which they use to communicate a wide range of information, including predator alarms and territorial calls to define boundaries amongst males. These songs are learned, and vary in form and meaning throughout the cardinals’ wide range.
Commonly seen at birdfeeders, cardinals primarily eat seeds and berries, with bugs and snails making up a small minority of the adults’ diet. Baby redbirds, however, mostly eat insects.
When researchers want to study songbirds, they often catch them in mist nets - finely meshed, vertical nets which briefly entangle the birds as they flitter around in the early morning hours. Birds are removed from the mistnets immediately upon capture, and handled quickly and safely while any measurements and samples are taken. Finally, a small, unique band is placed on the bird’s leg for later identification, and they are released. During this “alien-abduction”-style process, many species have different degrees of response. Cardinals are known amongst researchers as some of the feistiest in North America, and I can attest to the sharp pinch they can inflict on an unguarded finger!
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida, from the perspective of Rhett Barker.
Episode 16: North American Beavers
Famous, and sometimes infamous, for their dam building abilities, beavers are some of the most important habitat engineers in North America, creating wetlands, creating, expanding, and maintaining wetlands across the continent.
They make these dams to raise the water level of the streams they call home, creating a buffer around their half-submerged lodges. The entrances to these lodges are below the water level within the dammed reservoir, making it very difficult for predators to reach the adults or young while they rest.
Beavers in Florida also sometimes forego dam and lodge building to live in air spaces within riverside caves - the watery entrances to which provide similar protection. One species of snail is found only in a single spring cave along the Econfina creek, and it eats wood left in the cave by beavers!Â
Any species that has such heavy impacts across large areas will eventually run into conflict with humans, and beavers are no exception. While their dams may be useful ecologically, they are sometimes less than ideal for the humans who would prefer our lands remain dry.
One potential compromise is the use of “beaver deceivers” and similar devices which prevent beavers from clogging culverts and human drainage structures.Â
Note: This fact file was originally written for broadcast exclusively within Bay County/Panama City, Florida.
