During his 1911 visit, advertising tycoon Barron Collier was so impressed by Southwest Florida that he decided to buy much of it. By the time he was done, Collier owned over a million acres and the State of Florida named a county after him. Collier proposed to donate a portion of his land for the creation of a national park. The federal government declined but, in 1947, the land became Collier-Seminole State Park, one of the many natural heritage gems that have since been preserved by conservation organizations, various governments and the people of Collier County.

An epiphyte clings to a tree in Rookery Bay National Estuarine Reserve.

In the early 1900s, much of Southwest Florida was crowned by bald cypress trees, 130 feet tall. By the end of World War II, almost all of the mature bald cypress trees had been logged with the exception of a virgin stand in Corkscrew Swamp, fifteen miles northeast of Naples. As early as 1912, the National Audubon Society had stationed wardens in Corkscrew Swamp to chase away hunters who shot hundreds of birds at a time for their feathers, which were then very popular on ladies’ hats. In 1954, the Audubon Society joined with committed individuals and cooperative landowners to permanently save the virgin trees as well as the largest rookery of wood storks and egrets in the U.S., estimated to number between 8,000 and 10,000 birds. Today, Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary preserves 13,000 acres and creates a home for over 200 bird species.

In addition to Collier-Seminole State Park, Florida protects another 80,000 acres in Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, a linear swamp with a tropical climate that supports an abundance of wildlife. Fakahatchee has been called the orchid and bromeliad capital of North America with 44 native orchid species and 14 native bromeliad species. Fakahatchee Strand was featured in the Susan Orleans book The Orchid Thief as well as its film adaptation, appropriately titled Adaptation, as the place where journalists, screenwriters and horticulturists search for one of Fakahatchee’s most famous inhabitants, the rare ghost orchid.

Picayune Strand State Forest consists of 69,975 acres of land that was subdivided and sold as home sites in the 1960s even though the area is too wet for residential development. Florida and the federal government worked to piece together this forest from 17,000 individual property owners who had been duped by this infamous “swampland in Florida” scheme.

The 26,400-acre Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) was purchased in 1989 by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The population of this majestic cat once dwindled to an estimated 50 adults due to multiple factors including habitat destruction, disease, inbreeding and collisions with cars. The population currently stands at between 80 and 100 adults thanks to extraordinary land preservation efforts, breeding programs and herculean efforts to keep panthers from becoming road kill.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service maintains the 35,000-acre Ten-Thousand Islands NWR, which protects a large portion of the largest mangrove estuary in North America. Collier County also contains most of the National Park Service’s 729,000-acre Big Cypress National Preserve, which looks much like its eastern neighbor, Everglades National Park. Nearby, the 110,000-acre Rookery Bay National Estuarine Reserve provides habitat for American crocodile, sea turtles and over 150 bird species.

In 2001 and 2006, the voters of Collier County approved a quarter-mill property tax expected to raise $189 million for habitat and open space preservation, particularly in the western part of the county. As of 2009, this program, called Conservation Collier, had preserved 3,848 acres. The County has also established ecologically-important county parks including Barefoot Beach Preserve, home of the endangered gopher tortoise, and Tigertail Beach, one of the best birding sites in Southwest Florida. In addition, Collier County has two of the most successful transfer of development rights programs in the U.S. One of these programs alone has preserved 31,400 acres by transferring development potential to Ave Maria, a smart-growth community surrounding a new Catholic cathedral and university.

In total, roughly 80 percent of the land area of Collier County has now been protected by concerned individuals, private organizations, governmental agencies and the general public who recognized the fragility and importance of this land and, more importantly, accepted responsibility for saving it.