An intern with SCCF’s Wildlife & Habitat Management team during the summer of 2025, FGCU senior Whitney Hummel’s Letter to the Editor was featured in the Feb. 21 Fort Myers/Naples News-Press.

Sanibel sets an example

As a Water School student at Florida Gulf Coast University, I feel a strong responsibility to protect Florida’s natural lands for the animals, people, and the world we all share. Urbanization is too often considered the default, and wildlife lands are treated as a nuisance or just another profit opportunity. This logic fails to appreciate the centrality of healthy ecosystems to water quality, biodiversity, and overall human well-being. It should remain central to how we live rather than something we continually replace.

I previously worked as a Wildlife Intern for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF), where I observed native species thriving in protected areas. Watching Sanibel purposefully protect its land brought me hope and taught me that conservation can be a shared community value. Wildlife clearly benefited from these protections, but I saw more happiness and more connected people because people weren’t actively trying to efface nature; they tried to coexist with it. That experience inspired me to write this letter because Florida needs far more communities looking after themselves the way Sanibel does.

Florida Forever is Florida’s primary land conservation program, and it works well to maintain this balance by funding the acquisition and protection of environmentally important land in the state. Since its inception, the program has saved millions of acres, including conservation lands on Sanibel, which protect wildlife habitat and water resources. I urge Florida Representative Tiffany Esposito and other Florida politicians to fully fund Florida Forever at or above the governor’s recommended $115 million. Protecting these lands now contributes to a future in which nature is recognized as a foundation of life rather than an impediment to it.

Whitney Hummel, Fort Myers

Whitney is pictured above at the National American Water Resources Association (AWRA) conference in Denver, where she won first place in the poster session. The poster includes SCCF Wildlife & Habitat Management Director Chris Lechowicz, Biologist Mike Mills, Wildlife Technician Nadine Cobb, and Research Associate Mark Thompson as collaborators.