Services and Facilities Available
through the Coastal Plains Institute for making natural history documentary
films based out of the Institute's headquarters in Tallahassee, Florida.
Equipment
and Services Land and Habitats
Recent Projects
Photos
Contact
us
Equipment and Services:
- two 4-wheel-drive
Toyota king-cab trucks and drivers.
- a 500-square foot
filming studio in downtown Tallahassee close to hardware and lumber supply
stores (for set building) and handy to the Tallahassee Regional Airport.
- Tools and equipment
for conducting prescribed burns, AND prescribe burning experience (certified
prescribed burner).
- Snake-wrangling equipment
and 30+ years' of experience. Captive snakes available for filming include
eastern diamondback rattlesnake, cottonmouth, canebrake (=timber) rattlesnake,
copperhead, and nonvenomous native Florida snakes.
- Access to red wolf,
black bear, bobcat, Florida panther (=cougar), whitetail deer, otter, and
other mammals at nearby wildlife parks.
- Access to local birds
through several injured bird keepers/facilities and a birds of prey center
(3 hours' drive north).
- Access to buffalo
(bison) at state park and private owners.
- Tools for constructing
sets.
- Chainsaws, axes, dirt-moving
equipment.
- Canoes and other boats
and motors.
- Pretty much most of
what you need. If the Coastal Plains Institute doesn't have it, we can arrange
to get it.
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Land
and Habitats:
- CPI owns an 80-acre
tract of land in the middle of the Apalachicola National Forest (1 1/4 hour
drive southwest of Tallahassee) with quick and easy access to all the native
wetland and upland habitats in flatwoods of the Coastal Plain. This tract
and an adjacent 30 acres of native longleaf pine forest are burned annually
and can be used to film fire ecology. A blackwater stream runs through the
tract with cypress and tupelo forest along it. A 150-acre wet flat resplendent
with pitcher plants and other carnivorous bog plants runs into one corner
of the property and is available for filming. The property is close to deep
cypress/tupelo swamps in the floodplain of Florida's largest river, the Apalachicola
River. Also, all the native vegetation of the 500,000-acre Apalachicola National
Forest is available adjacent to the site.
- CPI owns and manages
a 170-acre wet flat on Perdido Bay in Pensacola (2 hour drive west of Tallahassee)
which is being managed to recover the native pitcher plant/carnivorous plant
landscape using annual May-June prescribed burns. This is restoration ecology
at its best. We are using fire alone to recover the natural landscape ecology.
- Access to Wakulla
Springs State Park with the wild and lovely Wakulla River hardwood bottomland
swamp and exotic spring-run river animals such as the limpkin.
- Access to other large
springs and spring-run rivers and their adjacent hardwood bottomland hardwood
swamps in north Florida such as the Wacissa/Aucilla, St. Marks, Econfina,
Itchetucknee, and others.
- Access to the 150,000-acre
St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge with coastal native vegetation including
hydric hammock, palm forest, mysterious springs and spring-run rivers, longleaf
pine sandhills, coastal freshwater and saltwater marshes
- Access to the relieved
terrain of north Florida: ravines and steepheads of the Apalachicola River
and Eglin AFB. Home to endemic and relict plants and animals that moved south
during Pleistocene cold climates
- 285 ponds within 20
minutes drive of Tallahassee that are part of a long-term study of pond hydrology
and vertebrate life cycles. Small temporary ponds among this set of ponds
contain up to 30 species of frogs, salamanders, and turtles (no fish) that
utilize such ponds exclusively in their life cycles. Other, more permanent
ponds, have 10 or more species of fish and a different suite of frogs, salamanders,
and turtles.
- CPI can provide any
Coastal Plain habitat, animal, or plant for filming. Contact us at means@bio.fsu.edu
or 850-681-6208.
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For
more information contact Bruce Means at:

D.
Bruce Means PhD.
Coastal Plains Institute
1313 North Duval St.
Tallahassee, FL 32303
E-mail: means@bio.fsu.edu
phone: 850-681-6208
FAX: 850-681-6123
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