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Speaker 1: Not only are we poised today to break ground on one miles of bridge for Tamiami
Trail, but we're also poised to break ground on a crown jewel restoration project, this
is the Picayune Strand. Fifty-five thousand acres of some of the most important Florida
panther habitat on the planet and it's a restoration project with a wonderful story.
If you turn back the clock to the 1960's, this was a subdivision. People were hopeful
that they could build a housing subdivision in this 55,000 acres of pristine habitat for
the panther. Well, like some land deals in Florida, historically, it didn't work out
so well for the developers and as a result the state and federal partnership that we
have with restoration was able to come in and purchase that area lot by lot, cobble
together the footprint of this 55,000 acre restoration project and we are poised now
to break ground and basically back fill those canals to allow that natural sheet flow of
water across the landscape into 10,000 Islands National Wildlife Refuge to the South into
Everglades National Park to the South. This is 55,000 acres of the most important
panther habitat in the world that if history would've given us a different turn, could
have been lost.