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Carlton Ward

A male panther leaps over a creek at Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Florida. The rarely seen cats, which number only around 200, are reclaiming territory north of the Everglades, but their habitat is threatened by suburban sprawl. In June, Florida enacted sweeping protections for wildlife corridors critical to their survival. (From “How America’s most endangered cat could help save Florida,” March 2021.)

The family of Subway co-founder Fred DeLuca donated 27,000 acres of undeveloped near Yeehaw Junction, in Osceola County, for preservation. It contains about half of all Florida grasshopper sparrow breeding pairs.

A male panther jumps over a creek in Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. A panther would visit this camera trap site approximately once a month. Because panthers are mostly nocturnal, it took nearly two years of camera trapping to capture this daylight image.

Moths pollinating rare ghost orchids.

A lake in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, where ghost orchid pollination was documented by Carlton Ward Jr., in a parallel effort to Mac Stone at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

The first-ever photo sequence showing a streaked sphinx month (Protambulyx strigilis) probing and potentially pollinating a ghost orchid flower.