Florida Couple Buys 45-Acre Swamp in 2007 to Protect It from Development. 15 Years Later, It’s Home to Hundreds of Wood Storks

When a Florida couple bought a 45-acre swamp beside their home nearly two decades ago, they wanted to make sure the land would remain a safe place for wildlife. What they ended up with was a thriving sanctuary where hundreds of wood storks came to nest.

According to Futura Sciences, Jim Stevenson, a retired state park biologist, and his wife, wildlife photographer Tara Tanaka, purchased the cypress swamp outside Tallahassee in 2007 to protect it from development. By 2022, the property was home to 275 nesting wood storks, per a report published that June by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, highlighting the couple’s conservation efforts.

But the sanctuary didn’t become a haven for birds overnight. Long before the couple purchased the swamp, Stevenson had already been working to keep it healthy, paddling his canoe into the water to remove invasive Chinese tallow trees by hand so wood storks could forage.

Over the years, he continued tending to the property, using prescribed burns to manage the surrounding land and bringing in equipment to remove thick vegetation that threatened to overtake the swamp’s open water. He even created a small island where the resident alligators could bask in the sun.

Those alligators serve another purpose, too. Their presence helps discourage raccoons from raiding the wood storks’ nests, giving the birds a better chance of successfully raising their young.

For Tanaka, who has spent years photographing and filming the animals that visit the property, the sanctuary has become a place where she recognizes some of the birds that return seasonally.

“I love seeing them come back year after year,” she told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2022. “When I look out of my office window, I watch them land in the big water oak in our backyard and collect sticks for nesting.”

And wood storks are far from the only animals that have made themselves at home in the swamp.

Great blue herons, great egrets, little blue herons and green herons are among the birds that use the property, while anhingas, wood ducks and black-bellied whistling ducks also nest there. Roseate spoonbills occasionally stop by, and the surrounding land is visited by bobcats, foxes, otters, beavers, coyotes and marsh rabbits.

The couple’s work has also helped protect a species that once faced an uncertain future in the United States.

Wood storks, large white wading birds known for their dark, featherless heads and long bills, nearly disappeared from their traditional nesting grounds in the Everglades during the 20th century. Their breeding population fell from approximately 20,000 nesting pairs in the 1930s to fewer than 5,000 by the 1970s, prompting federal officials to list the species as endangered in 1984.

Since then, conservation efforts across the southeastern United States have helped the birds recover, with the breeding population reaching at least 10,000 nesting pairs by the time of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2022 report.

For Stevenson and Tanaka, protecting their own piece of that habitat has meant making sure it remains safe long after they’re gone.

In 2016, the couple secured a permanent conservation easement through the Apalachee Land Conservancy, placing lasting restrictions on development and activities that could harm the sanctuary’s wildlife.

“No shooting, no fishing, even the frogs are protected,” Tanaka told the federal agency.

Their commitment has extended beyond their own property, too. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Stevenson and Tanaka hosted classes for other private landowners interested in creating healthier habitats for wildlife, teaching them about native plants, prescribed burns and land management.

The sessions regularly drew 45 to 50 participants, showing that other property owners were eager to learn how they could make a difference.

For the couple, the sanctuary has become an example of what can happen when people give wildlife the space and protection it needs. And while the wood storks’ recovery has depended on conservation work across multiple states, their swamp offers a glimpse of the role individual landowners can play.

“Natural and restored lands held in private ownership by people and organizations who genuinely care about them will have to play a role in the future of wildlife protection,” Tanaka said.