Earlier this year, photographer Carlton Ward Junior and three colleagues embarked on a trip to bring attention to the need to connect Florida's remaining wild areas before it's too late. They called it the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expedition. Tonight Ward will host the first public exhibition of his photographs taken during that 100-day, 1,000-mile trip.

Twenty works by nature photographer Carlton Ward Junior will be on display at Selby Gardens in Sarasota through November. A dozen of them are documents of the journey earlier this year from the tip of the Everglades to the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

“This will be the first public exhibition of my photography from the Florida Wildlife Corridor story”, said Ward. “And I think it's a great venue, because it's one of the world's leading centers for epiphytes and bromeliads and a real center of botanical interest. So it brings together the art and the science and the conservation.”

Ward will be on hand tonight at 7 p.m. to kick off the exhibition. He'll also host a gallery walk and talk at Selby Gardens on October 17.