hen it comes to wildlife in Florida, the alligator might come to mind far sooner than the Florida bonneted bat (Eumops floridanus). It’s understandable. Scientists estimate there are 1.3 million alligators in the state, and Florida bonneted bats are rare. But this Endangered bat recently entered the spotlight in a years-long conservation battle that included legal challenges against development in Miami-Dade County—and the bats won.

The Florida bonneted bats’ habitat includes the Pine Rocklands, a critically imperiled ecosystem found within the urban sprawl of Miami. This sparse pine forest that grows atop limestone once covered more than 180,000 continuous acres in South Florida. Today, only 10% of that area remains, mostly within Everglades National Park.

Outside the park, the area dwindles to around 1.2% of its former acreage, spread out in various pockets. One of the largest tracts of remaining pine rocklands is a 67-acre plot adjacent to Zoo Miami called the Richmond Tract.

This is the setting of the great Miami Wilds controversy.

Miami Wilds was a proposed water park and entertainment complex that would have been built on parts of the Zoo Miami parking area and surrounding land. If built, the development would have disrupted not only the Florida bonneted bats, but the entire pine rocklands ecosystem. But thanks to an enormous effort by groups including Bat Conservation International (BCI), Tropical Audubon Society, Center for Biological Diversity, the Miami Blue Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association, and the local community in Miami-Dade County, the development has been halted. The happy ending of this conservation story demonstrates the power of united partnerships.

At the heart of the Miami Wilds controversy is the Florida bonneted bat, Florida’s only endemic bat, which is the rarest bat species in the United States. It’s also the second largest bat in North America, with a 6-inch-long body and 20-inch wingspan. Before 2011, that’s pretty much all that was known about the species. That year, however, veterinarian Frank Ridgley, Director of the Conservation and Research Department at Zoo Miami, took an interest in the bat. “I was introduced to it by some colleagues, and I realized this was a highly Endangered bat right in our backyard,” he says.

Conducting acoustic studies to learn more about the bats’ location and habitat, Ridgley discovered a dire lack of suitable roosts for them, largely due to habitat destruction. In the days when the pine rocklands flourished, Florida bonneted bats lived in red-cockaded woodpecker holes in old-growth pine trees. Since natural roosts are no longer readily available, a different solution needed to be found.

Ridgley’s work with the Florida bonneted bat caught BCI’s attention, and BCI and Zoo Miami worked together to found the Miami Bat Lab, dedicated to the study and protection of Florida bonneted bats. Together, Ridgley and BCI installed artificial roosts—known to most as bat houses—starting in 2018, and the bats flocked to them.

“BCI has continued to be my strongest partner here at the zoo for this program, helping us all work together to figure out what’s needed next for the species,” Ridgley says. “We have this whole network of artificial roosts, and we’ve seen the bats move in and their population grow, so that part’s working. But next we need to look at foraging.”

Through his research, Ridgley discovered that the Florida bonneted bat tends to forage for prey—typically large insects—in wide open areas. And that’s partially due to the fact that they’re among the fastest bats in the world. Ridgley likens them to a jet airplane: “They are designed for high-speed, high-altitude flight with their wing shape. They’re made to scream across the sky,” he says. As such, they can’t turn very quickly, so open space is a must for hunting. That brings us to the Zoo Miami parking lot, an open space that’s the perfect foraging ground for Florida bonneted bats—and a water park was set to fill it.

The road to Miami Wilds was a long one. In 2006, voters in Miami-Dade County passed a referendum that allowed the development of an entertainment district adjacent to Zoo Miami, as long as it wasn’t on environmentally sensitive land. Back then, when so little was known about the Florida bonneted bat, the Zoo Miami parking lot wasn’t thought to be environmentally sensitive. In 2013, developers established Miami Wilds, LLC, and in 2020, Miami-Dade County entered a lease agreement with the developers. But by this point, conservationists had learned much more about Florida bonneted bats and their reliance on the parking lot as a foraging ground, as well as the overall importance of the pine rockland ecosystem.

“In 2020, BCI and the Tropical Audubon Society spoke out against the development,” says Mylea Bayless, BCI’s Chief of Strategic Partnerships. But their pleas went unheeded. For the next few years, BCI worked behind the scenes with the Tropical Audubon Society, the Miami Blue Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association, and the Center for Biological Diversity to stop the damaging water park development—and that work included legal action.

While BCI and Zoo Miami had been studying the Florida bonneted bat for years before the Miami Wilds project, the Center for Biological Diversity had been laying the groundwork for a legal case to protect the pine rocklands and the species that inhabit it.

“We had been working on pine rockland conservation for more than a decade, and it actually started with petitions to list some of the species that became central to the case under the Endangered Species Act,” says Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean Director and Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center petitioned and filed lawsuits to get timely protections for the Florida bonneted bat, which was listed in 2013. Another was the Miami tiger beetle, which was thought to have been extinct for 60 years but was rediscovered in the Richmond Tract in 2007. It was listed in 2016.

Simultaneously, the Tropical Audubon Society, the Miami Blue chapter of the North American Butterfly Association, the Sierra Club, and other local supporters rallied the public in support of protecting pine rocklands. “Our role was to mobilize the community behind us, to educate about the issue, and to reach out to the local elected officials,” says Lauren Jonaitis, Senior Conservation Director at the Tropical Audubon Society. “I brought a whole troop of people with me to the county commission meetings to speak out against this project.” Jonaitis and her team also sent out action alerts that prompted the public to email the county commissioners, as well as organized a major demonstration outside Zoo Miami that drew more than 400 people.

Between the substantial scientific evidence of the importance of the pine rocklands and the Endangered species that inhabit it, two lawsuits, and the public outcry against the development, the tides finally turned in favor of conservation. In December 2023, after the conservation community’s court victory, the Miami-Dade County Commission terminated the lease agreement with the Miami Wilds developers. Furthermore, in March 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated more than 1.1 million acres of habitat to be protected for the Florida bonneted bat.

This victory is far bigger than the prevention of one specific development project to protect one specific ecosystem. It’s a powerful example of how a coordinated team effort can produce outstanding results for conservation.

“We had Bat Conservation International, who had such specific, deep, comprehensive expertise on the conservation of the Florida bonneted bat. We had the Tropical Audubon Society, who was right there on the ground and is so good at working with communities at the local level and working with people in the community to bring them out to stand up for wildlife,” says Bennett. She adds that the Center for Biological Diversity’s strength was the ability to litigate under the Endangered Species Act. “That’s our goal—to have a very deep understanding of the law and be ready to stand up for species when something truly horrible might happen to them,” says Bennett.

But it’s not just the organizations that won the case. The local community’s pressure on elected officials undoubtedly tipped the scales. “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh, there’s nothing I can do.’ This is just one small example of how you absolutely can. You have a voice. You can make a difference,” says Bayless. “Working together as a community—that’s how you’re going to win.”

It’s a powerful reminder to look into your local ecosystems and what battles they might be facing, then contribute your voice to their cause. “The knowledge of who our natural neighbors are really empowers us to stand up for what’s right,” Bennett says.

While the termination of the Miami Wilds project marks a significant victory, conservationists emphasize that the work is far from over. “The main goal is to protect the site in perpetuity, so we can protect the Florida bonneted bat, the Miami tiger beetle, and all the other species,” says Jonaitis. One suggestion is to tie the Richmond Tract to Zoo Miami, opening the door for education and ecotourism opportunities. “This is where people from other parts of the world can visit and learn about the unique pine rockland habitat and the species that live there,” Jonaitis adds.

But the future of the ine ocklands habitat is not only about the Richmond Tract. While it’s the largest pine rocklands parcel in Miami-Dade County, there are others that also need protection. “Our hope is to protect all those parcels, because those are the connection pieces for all the species to move around,” says Jonaitis. “We need to design what we refer to as smart growth. Let’s design our cities and our infrastructure in a better way so that we can coexist with our unique natural areas.”