Photo: Judd Patterson, National Park Service | Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
For over 40 years, Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the state’s largest power utility, has been part of a wildly successful conservation story. In 1975, the American crocodile was facing extinction, with only 200 to 300 left, but in 1978, when workers at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant found a crocodile nest along one of its 5,900-acre “cooling canals,” FPL hired a team of biologists to implement a Crocodile Management Plan. The cooling canals provided an ideal habitat for laying eggs, and by 1985, the nests at Turkey Point were responsible for 10% of American crocodile hatchlings in South Florida. To date, biologists have tagged some 7,000 babies born at the plant, with a record-setting 565 hatchlings at Turkey Point in 2021.
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