(gentle orchestral music) - [Mallory] My family's been here for six or seven generations.

I had this experience as a kid driving around with my parents who would always say, "When I was your age, that was an orange grove."

They would point to some new housing development, and tell me about the grove or the fine woods that used to exist there.

35 years later, I've become that person.

(cheerful strumming music) ♪ In the night while my body slept in my bed ♪ This track is basically unknown.

♪ My mind was running through the woods instead ♪ - [Carlton] GPS, binoculars.

- [Joe] It's sitting right here.

I'll get it.

♪ Vagabond dreaming takes me through the night ♪ ♪ Sipping whiskey by the river ♪ - [Joe] What makes this so cool is really being explorers again.

♪ 100 miles an hour in the fast lane ♪ ♪ 100 miles an hour toward the light ♪ - [Carlton] We know the boundaries of this green ribbon, but there's not a hiking trail, there's not a paddling trail.

♪ See the curve in that river's bend ♪ ♪ And I look at you and I see my friend ♪ ♪ 100 miles an hour in the fast lane ♪ ♪ 100 miles an hour til the end ♪ ♪ Yip ♪ (energetic strumming music) It's gonna be a suffer fest for a few days here.

- Holy (beep).

I can't think of any better people to suffer with.

We've already spent a couple hundred days together on expedition.

Little bit sketchy.

Come up and just falling the river.

- Joining me right now, we have Joe Guthrie and Mallory Lykes Dimmitt.

Holy smokes, you're back and you're alive.

- We trekked for 70 straight days across all of Northwest Florida to the Alabama border.

- [Joe] When this expedition came up, I was immediately up for it.

We're gonna travel up Reedy Creek, the last best connection between two of the state's most important swamps.

(gentle piano music) (water sloshing) - Reedy Creek has been getting narrower and narrower, and at least to this point, it seems like it's run out of water.

Good thing we switched to hiking.

- [Mallory] Is this corridor even viable for larger animals?

We know that a black bear has made its way here but was unable to cross I-4.

- [Joe] M34 was a young male bear.

He made it to celebration right?

South of I-4, we spent a couple of days searching along the highway and you can see from the GPS tracks, he marched up and down the highway in the dark, looking for a place to get across and couldn't find it.

We'll be overlapping where his tracks took him.

I can imagine M34 having much the same experience traveling in these narrow strands of swamp and scrub and here and all around him, the noises of suburbia.

In so many ways, this trip is trying to demonstrate that there's still connection possible.

This does look like a Bobcat.

- [Mallory] We'll be looking at tracks, we'll be noticing all sorts of sign and keeping a species list.

(birds chirping) - We're looking pretty good now.

(tent zipping) (birds chirping) (quiet gentle music) This is the way my granddad used to do it.

Cut the bottom open.

(mouth slurping) Not bad.

This is the first water of any depth we've seen in more than a day.

Here we are at the edge of Reedy Creek, headwaters of the Everglades.

There's Lowe's and Home Improvement and the place we're standing now might be the most narrow pinched off part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor, and you can hear dogs barking on one side and cars on both.

To be standing in the middle, that means you're not more than 200 yards from the edge, and here it's just a fragile green thread.

(soft gentle music) The pace of change is so fast, our Google satellite imagery that we use to plan the route is already out of date.

It doesn't show the brand new subdivisions and the brand new roads that are going in.

There's been tremendous change to this region in the past five decades.

Since the day Disney came here, there were still 50 different ways a bear or panther to travel through this region.

- Here in Florida, we have something special.

We never enjoyed at Disneyland, a blessing of size.

There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we could possibly imagine.

- 50 years ago, Orlando was a very small town.

The population's just growing and pushing.

It's really not that different in Tampa, Naples Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach.

Florida continues to grow by a thousand people per day.

- [Carlton] Little Mermaid is little bit out of her territory.

- I'm too old.

I know the classics but-- - [Carlton] Ariel, Snow White, that looks like Sophia The First, in the middle Cinderella You wanna tuck that into my pouch?

Where'd Mal now go?

- Right here.

- You guys moving?

So easy to get separated in here.

Hey, Carlton - [Carlton] Can't even see him.

- [Joe] Woo.

- [Carlton] Where are you guys?

- [Joe] A swamp can be a disorienting place.

- You're sweating like crazy, and we're crawling up and over, basically armpit high vegetation and everything you touch could be poison ivy.

Right now, even though it's maybe the most suffering for us, this is pretty wild here.

- You see it moved just in?

It's a little above your eye level.

- [Mallory] When you get into places like this, you really start to become attuned to the landscape, every step that you take, and the more time you spend, the more it sort of opens up to you.

(soft upbeat music) - This spot back here isn't terrible.

It is a lot of poison ivy.

- It's a great place to be able to sit and eat breakfast.

- [Joe] Hey, on the move again on the move again.

Keep your eyes on it.

- [Carlton] That's your tent spot.

- [Joe] Okay Mallory and Carlton are a like family to me.

You look for any opportunity you can to reaffirm your commitment to your friends and to your people.

- [Carlton] Yeah, baby.

- Sure, life is much more simplified.

It's like a good sleeping bag.

The ability to boil water and have a simple cup of coffee in a place where not what most people would consider like hospitable or fun.

It's just nice knowing that you're kinda making a little space where you can be comfortable fixing a little meal, keep yourself going.

Yeah, I love this swamp.

(gentle music) (soft upbeat music) (water lapping) (soft upbeat music) - We'll be paddling up to something that is gonna cross this entire Creek landscape, and you can already hear the noise from it.

We're still a good half mile away.

(cars passing) - [Joe] When you get close to one of those highways, you have it come from a place of relative calm, you recoil.

(cars passing) - [Mallory] We know from telemetry data that wildlife will approach the road and hear that noise, and we'll turn back and we'll not be able to connect to the other populations on the other side of the road.

- [Carlton] We met up with Jen Corn.

- It looks like y'all had having a rough time.

- [Carlton] One of the state's panther biologists.

- One of the goals of setting cameras under here is are wildlife using it as it is.

What are some really simple things could they possibly do?

Cats do get across I-4 occasionally.

One cat made it to Southern Georgia and that cat's DNA showed that he came from South Florida, so they're capable of making those distances.

(solemn music) - [Carlton] We learned that two Florida panthers have been killed by vehicles within a quarter mile of that crossing.

(cars passing) - Some people that I've come across think it's just a lost cause like this I-4 is just a barrier.

We're never gonna be able to do anything about for wildlife, and I don't think that's the case at all.

I think that there is still 100% a chance to make this more permeable for wildlife.

(solemn music) - For a panther to be born hundreds of miles away in South Florida, and they get hit by a car here on the edge of Orlando.

It tells you this wildlife corridor is still working.

It all shows you exactly what's wrong with it.

(somber music) This region has gone from a place where all manner of wildlife had room to roam, to what is fast becoming a hard barrier that could potentially cut the state of Florida in half.

(somber music) - I think it's hard to recognize the loss while it's happening and we're really good at recognizing that loss when it's too late.

(somber music) (canoe wiggling) (water lapping) - There's literally one step at a time for the first 4 1/2 days of hiking, so it's been a real treat to get on the water here and actually be able to get a little bit of glide with a stroke and think about where we are and what we're doing, and still blows my mind that we're sitting here in this gorgeous floodplain forest, listening to the sounds of a Disney theme park, just a mile or so off to the right.

(gentle music) (cheerful upbeat music) (water splashing) (birds chirping) - Something's going down the creek below us.

- Great Blue Heron, no?

Until I thought it was gonna be from a distance.

- Hung out to the side and it landed.

The limpkin was hanging out on that limb that's out over the water for the longest time.

(birds chirping) - I can hear the tourists less than a mile over there on a ride through Disney's Animal Kingdom, probably looking at lions and giraffes and all sorts of other things with no idea that this is happening right here.

(birds chirping) (gentle music) - [Joe] It's just crazy, the two different Florida's that exist out there.

♪ You got me walking 10 miles high ♪ - I think what we all have to do is sort of be able to walk in both of those worlds, and that's very representative of the corridor.

We're trying to show that you can actually balance development and wildlife habitats, but that we have to plan in order to make that happen.

- This corridor is really hiding in plain sight and that's what this is about.

We've gotta keep this last best connection between the green swamp and the Everglades.

- And we keep developing without corridors that is gonna cut off all of that conservation legacy from the rest of Florida and from the rest of America.

That's what we're fighting for.

(lighthearted guitar music) ♪ My best guess ♪ ♪ Is too far off ♪ ♪ And in my chest ♪ - What I want to tell Floridians, what I want to tell the world is that while Florida is still here, it still exists.

It still has a chance to be saved.

(water bubbling) Woo!

♪ I sit alone ♪ And what is a great swamp!

(all laughing) ♪ In an empty house, writing notes ♪ ♪ While I'm thinking about ♪ ♪ The few folks ♪ ♪ I didn't let down ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ You got me walking 10 miles high ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ (somber music)