Study: Florida ranks first for wildlife spotting

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – In a state known for beaches, the Everglades and exotic species that include panthers and alligators, it may come as little surprise Florida was named the best state in the country for wildlife spotting.

Conducted by Go2Africa, the study ranked Florida first for wildlife photography with 34.31% of images featuring wildlife. Specifically, the state had 234,076 wildlife photos taken out of 682,181 pictures overall.

Florida was followed in a distant second place by Texas at 18.53%, or more than 112,000 wildlife photos out of over 600,000 overall. California, which finished third by percentage, had over 115,000 wildlife photos taken.

The rest of the top 10 included Alaska, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, Arizona and New York.

“Florida has a huge range of environments that are home to many colorful species from swamps to coral reefs,” the release said. “The Florida panther, northern river otter, mink, white-tailed deer, bobcat, nine-banded armadillo, and Virginia opossum are all species you’d find within the state, making it a great spot for wildlife spotters to explore.”

Go2Africa found its data by analyzing how many photos were tagged “wildlife” on the photo sharing platform Flickr. It then compared the percentage of wildlife photos to that location with Florida as the runaway favorite.

Overall, Go2Africa examined 33 million photos on Flickr in its study. The company is an African safari tour operator based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Notably, Yellowstone National Park was listed as the fourth best national park to spot wildlife in the world with 18.8% of pictures featuring wildlife.

According to the study, Vermont was named as the worst state for wildlife photography at 1.15%. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Kentucky and West Virginia rounded out the bottom five.