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.

• 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.

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