What surprised you about this story? The sheer number of species that rely on a gopher tortoise burrow for survival, roughly 365, and the diversity of creatures sharing the burrow is astounding.

Gopher tortoise relocations spike amid development boom, but Florida running out of room Will Indian River County let developers build Ridge Top neighborhood atop 600 gopher tortoise burrows in ...

Reporter Timothy O’Hara delves into the life of a gopher tortoise, its burrow and its importance.

This makes protecting gopher tortoises and their burrows vital not just for the survival of the species, but for the survival of Florida’s fragile ecosystem as a whole.

The right-of-way (ROW) manager with Cooperative Energy, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, points toward a half-moon-shaped hole in the ground about 15 ft away. A flash of a figure just disappeared into the ...

This makes protecting gopher tortoises and their burrows vital not just for the survival of the species, but for the survival of Florida’s fragile ecosystem as a whole.

It’s exactly those burrows that make the gopher tortoise so important, and why they’re the subject of such strong protections from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

This makes protecting gopher tortoises and their burrows vital not just for the survival of the species, but for the survival of Florida’s fragile ecosystem as a whole.