Georgia native Mel Finn, an adopted son of Florida, was a U.S. Army Air Corps veteran, University of Miami graduate, attorney, founder of the Florida Nature Conservancy, member of Tropical Audubon and the South Florida Orchid Society, and a self-trained field biologist who criss-crossed the cutover Fahkahatchee and identified 45 varieties of orchids, nine found nowhere else. As the Fahkahatchee’s voice, he was dogged, persistent, and abrasive when needed, badgering nature groups, leading chest-deep field trips, and writing appeals to preserve what had once been the mightiest of South Florida cypress strands. An ailing heart took him before his dream was realized, but he had made his point, and Florida funded acquisition through a buy-back program still underway. Because of Finn’s vision and persistence, the recovering Fahkahatchee endures as a main artery in the circulatory system of Southwest Florida, and a wilderness greenway born from his dream stretches fifty miles from the southeast corner of Lee County to the waters of Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, linking Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Fahkahatchee State Reserve, and the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge.