Where the WILD THINGS REALLY ARE

BY ROGER WILLIAMS rwilliams@floridaweekly.com

PHOTOS FROM NPS.GOV, FWS.GOV, WCSU.EDU

WHEN FLORIDA WEEKLY BROKE THE NEWS A year ago that roughly 1 million people now live in the region, defining it as an urban core (see Florida Weekly, Oct. 22, 2008), the paper may have missed the point completely.

True, the numbers are astounding, and probably climbing quickly out of date. By next year, roughly 1.3 million people will live in Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties alone, according to estimates released by the University of Florida and the U.S. Census Bureau.

But here's the more remarkable point: Every single resident is wired to wilderness by a long, invisible strand of instinctive need, stretching from the psyche straight into the woods.

Paradoxically, and fortunately for all of us, wilderness remains grafted to the region like a vast and patchy skin, a remnant of once-upon-a-time that proves startlingly robust here and there, in spite of the flood of humanity.

This week we describe several of the wildest remaining places, along with a few of their inhabitants — places located within an hour's drive or so of each resident in Southwest Florida. We'll tell you how to get there, what to take and what you might find when you arrive. We've chosen these places based on our own experience, and on the recommendations of rangers, park managers and wizards of the woods, if you will. There are other wild places, too.

Eastern Indigo Snake Stretches as long as 8.5 feet

None of this, we hope, misses the point in a region where proliferating humans and protected wild habitats still manage to coexist, and where even experienced trekkers can still get lost.

But in the wild, motion is not always as important as motionless.

"To get this generation's earphones off, and have them sit without moving on a dark beach or in the pine flatwoods, or on a trail in an oak hammock or in a cypress head for even half an hour, is an amazing experience," says William Hammond, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University.

"When they debrief that experience, what comes out of them is insightful and powerful. That's why these remaining wild places are so valuable. Thoreau and others have written about how ingrained wilderness is to our psyche, but so many people miss it. They're virtual, and they don't know how to get real. It's nature deficit disorder, to borrow a phrase from Richard Louv's (2005) book, 'Last Child in the Woods.'"

Crested Caracara Not a hawk or a vulture - it's a falcon

There's a cure for that. In the space of a single day or night you can find nature's palette painted across the three counties.

In wilderness here, the immense sound of silence can still tremble and shiver around you with no more significant a decibel contour than a soundless sea-grass.

The rank power or raw grace of wild things you confront with the senses — sight, sound, scent or touch, maybe even taste — await you here in hammocks, heads or flatwoods, in prairies or marshes, along moss-hung tributary creeks or even on some beaches, like animate treasure: a black bear rambling only yards from your position. Or the most ferocious cat in nature, pound-for-pound, slinking across your trail (not the panther but the bobcat). Or a mother raccoon and her four or five young, all peeking like a gaggle of banditry from the mouth of an old hollow log. Or a sinewy rope of glistening reptile as black as obsidian, slipping into the unblinking dark eye of a gaping gopher tortoise hole — the eastern indigo snake.

Black Bear Will smell you a mile away and fast as a horse

Or perhaps a dolphin, leaping from one world into another. The sea parts suddenly for the muscular mammal like a lover's lips, introducing the rocket to the sky, and no one but you to see and know: This is where the wild things are.

X Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park:

 

Like a long rectangle stretching north to south about 20 miles in a lazy breadth of three to five miles, this magnificent wild place is the single largest unit in Florida's park service, an 80,000-acre wonder.

"We're the orchid capital of the United States, we were up to 47 orchids, and I've seen 37 of them, but we think maybe four or five are gone — they were over-collected years ago — so maybe we only really have 41 or 42 now," says Mike Owen, the affable park biologist who has reached his 16th anniversary in the park this week. Beginning now, he and other staff members will lead four-hour day hikes into the park three weekends a month, through March, taking a few people at a time on a first come, first-served basis. For those experienced with map and compass, he says, he will lead a longer one.

Diamondback Terrapin As large as your open hand

"Of the 530 native species of plants here I probably know and can identify about half," he adds.

And then there are the animals and birds and fish and insects, scores of species.

"Only three prominent things that were once here no longer exist here," Mr. Owen says. "The Carolina parakeet; the red wolf — it still exists in North Carolina, and we do have coyotes, which look like red wolves and can breed with them, although they don't love the wet; and the ivory-billed woodpecker. We hope the ivory bill is still around. But we doubt it."

The park also includes such rare creatures as the crested caracara, which combines the instincts and talents of a hawk with those of a vulture; native crawdads in the crystal clear water where mosquito fish abound in season; and bear, deer, North American crocodiles, American alligators in significant numbers, eagles, otters, Osceola turkeys, and 14 species of bromeliads. Most of those grow on host trees without taking any food from them, instead nourishing themselves from the air and water.

Florida Panther Can jump 18 feet high and live 10 years

Numerous other flora and fauna also exist here, along with the Everglades mink.

"Roger Hammer (a famous American ornithologist and author) told me how to see them," Mr. Owen says. "If you just stop occasionally when you're traveling down the road, they may come right back across the road behind you."

Everglades minks average about a pound, and are known as ferocious predators, preferring rabbits or rats — the park is chock full of marsh hares — and taking on animals twice their weight or more.

"I've seen one mink this year, in May," Mr. Owen recalls. "And of course we have panthers, about six of them — and the Big Cypress National Preserve east of State Road 29 is right next to us, with 730,000 acres, along with the Panther Refuge of 26,000 acres. Those places have 20 or more."

Florida Kestral Size of a blue-jay it's our only nesting falcon

In 16 years, Mr. Owen has seen six panthers. One encounter proved particularly memorable, he recalls. A park volunteer reading rain gauges called him from mile-point 8.3 on Janes Scenic Drive and told him a big panther was crouched high in a tree overlooking the drive.

When Mr. Owen arrived 15 minutes later, somebody was parked taking pictures, and soon a few more drivers appeared. He moved them all away from the tree, so they could watch the cat without blocking its line of retreat — down and out into the woods.

"One guy pulled up in a truck, and I got that question you always get: 'What is there to see here?' And for the first and only time in my career, I was able to say, "If you pull off and come back to us quietly, you'll see a panther 25 feet above your truck.'

"I got to watch that animal for 38 minutes. It finally decided to come down, and took off the other way."

If you care to go look at all that, consider this: The park is a limestone valley three to six feet deep, created by the natural acids in rains that have fallen for more than 5,000 years.

Because much of it is under shallow water for significant parts of the year — roughly 18 inches to about three feet deep — pop ash-pond apple sloughs have thrived, since they can put up with the standing water.

In the 1940s and '50s, loggers removed the huge virgin cypress forests with hand tools, leaving some great trees standing (one is 6 feet in diameter). Those were used in everything from the magnificent to the mundane — from the decks of World War II battleships to soda-pop bottling crates and stadium seats.

But the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve, with 160 miles of tram trails from the old logging days, remains by all accounts one of the region's great wild places.

.. if you go

>> Where: The entrance is near Copeland just north of Everglades City off State Road 29. Look for signs. >> Contact: For information or hikes, call Pam Mesce, (239) 695-1023. Points of Interest: The Boardwalk at Big Cypress Bend. >> What to bring: water, compass, maps, long pants, lace-up shoes (Mr. Owen prefers $100, above-the-ankle G.I. boots for ankle support or a good high-top sneaker), a broom handle or ski pole or similar staff. >> More information: Call 695-4593, or look on-line: www.floridastateparks.org/ fakahatcheestrand/default.cfm

CREW Land & Water Trust:

 

Brenda Brooks, the manager of the vast, 60,000-acre CREW Land & Water Trust, can look out her office window and see Florida's native white-tailed deer almost any day of the week.

But that's nothing. So can everybody else — from the tower.

"From that tower you can look across the whole corkscrew marsh, and see deer. But every month you can also see a different bouquet of flowers," says Bill Hammond, the retired FGCU professor who is now the president of the CREW Land & Water Trust, which helps manage the place, along with land stewards from the South Florida Water Management District.

"A lot of people go and come back and think everything looks the same. But it doesn't at all. You start to learn the seasons in Florida when you pick them up from observation out here," Mr. Hammond points out. "You get the hawk's eye view from the tower, and now you can walk a trail way back into the oak hammock, an opportunity which hasn't been accessible to a lot of people."

There are also trails (5.5 miles of trails exist for any wilderness seeker who can breath and put one foot in front of the other) through some of the most splendid cypress dome habitat in the Western world.

At about 94 square miles, this wild preserve has a vast variety of wildthings options, with room for panthers, bobcats, bears, turkeys, and reptiles, including both the eastern indigo — Florida's state snake — and the eastern diamondback rattlesnake.

You can spot the crested caracara, any of the smaller hawk species including merlins and kestrels, roseate spoonbills, alligator snapping turtles, American alligators, and probably some of the things you might find in the Fakahatchee Strand to the southeast, too: golden salamanders and amphiumas (almost never seen, these two-foot wonders resemble eels and live in the dark corners of swamps or canals, on the bottom. They rely on a powerful bite delivered by rows of sharp teeth and the ability to eat anything that swims by). That's to name only a few.

There are also many species of plants and flowers, including the hand fern, an extremely rare creation that looks like zombie hands, or perhaps like a staghorn fern divided into smaller sections.

And that's just to start with.

One of Mr. Hammond's most memorable moments came when he was escorting students along the boardwalk. He'd convinced them to walk quietly, without chatter or noise, restraining their coughs and laying their feet down gently. And it paid off.

"A bear and cub were suddenly standing there on the boardwalk about 25 yards from us," he recalls. "We just stood there and looked at each other, and then she realized we were more than she was, and she and the cub went over the rail."

How often will that happen in a lifetime?

Not frequently. And not at all unless you go out and try this beautiful wild place, and see what happens.

.. if you go

>> Where: CREW Land & Water Trust. Directions to the Crew marsh trail system: Take Exit 123 off I-75 and go east on Corkscrew Road (County Road 850) approximately 18 miles. The entrance is on your right. Look for brown road signs on your right. >>OR: To the CREW cypress dome: Take Exit 123 and go east on Corkscrew Road (County Road 850) approximately 14 miles. The entrance is on your right. Look for brown road signs on your right just after you round a long curve to the north. >>Contact: Brenda Brooks or Brenda Thomas: 657-2253. >>Points of Interest: A spring wildflower walk, a tower, and miles of trails. CREW abuts both the Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary and the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and includes the Corkscrew marsh system and the bird rookery swamp, along with two distinct strands. >>What to Bring: Water, long pants, tie-on shoes or boots, a map and compass if you're going to get off the trail, a staff or stick for hiking, binoculars. >>More Information: Call 657-2253, or go online at www.crewtrust.org.

f Cayo Costa State Park:

 

Part of a cluster of smaller parks known as geoparks, Cayo Costa is one of several stretching from northeastern Lee into eastern Charlotte County. Those include a park on North Captiva, the island of Cayo Costa, a park on Gasparilla Island, a park on Don Pedro Island, and Stump Pass coming out of Lemon Bay in the Englewood area.

Cayo Costa is accessible only by private boat or a ferry scheduling regular trips out of Pineland, on Pine Island.

With nine miles of beaches and more than six miles of hiking trails that spool through tropical hardwood hammocks and along mangrove swamps in this 2,500-acre state park, what you see at a distance, from the boat, is an illusion.

The place looks small, and depending on the season, sometimes groups of people are clearly in evidence at the public landing site — and that doesn't appear to fit the definition of "wild." But there is much more than meets the eye at first glance here, both in the surrounding sea and on the island.

"There are days on the Gulf side of the beach when you can look north or south and maybe not see any other human beings," says Mark Duncan, a park ranger. "Because this is one of the last barrier islands without development, what you see is probably about what you would have seen a century ago."

To name only a few, you can see a remarkable variety of sea birds and migratory birds, depending on the season, including such jewels as painted buntings and scarlet tanagers, or roseate spoonbills, or colonial nesting birds such as the nesting skimmer. Hundreds of the black-and-white birds with their colorful bills surround the island now, taking wing to float only an inch above the waves in a beautiful display of close-air aerobatics.

Inland there are alligators, marsh rabbits, raccoons, bald eagles and many other creatures — sometimes including such surprising visitors as the coach whip, which swims to the island from the mainland on rare occasions when seas are very low, says Barry Stevens, the assistant park manager.

"I've been all over the world," Mr. Stevens adds, "and this is one of the finest places I've ever seen. It's at the northern end of the tropics, but we call it an ecotone, because it's the northern end of the range for some things, and the southern end of the range for others."

One of the most rare treasures is the healthy community of hairy grama grass, a Texas grass found only here and in the 360-acre park on Upper Captiva Island.

In the water itself, on the east side of the island, is a vital sea-grass community that provides a health nursery for many small fish. There are manatees, dolphins and — in a bounty year — some 180 sea turtles who came ashore to lay eggs last March.

"On the Gulf side, too, you can find some of the finest sea shells, along with bluefish, flounder, sea trout, grouper and shark," says Mr. Duncan. "And on the bay side, if you care to throw a line in, there are snook, pompano, redfish, mangrove snapper, trout, and black drum."

To name some. And all of them wild things.

.. if you go

>> Where: Cayo Costa State Park, accessible only boat or ferry in northeastern Lee County. >> Contact: Call (941) 964-0375. Chad Lach is park manager; Barry Stevens is assistant park manager. For ferry information or reservations, call: 283-0015. Directions to ferry: Travel to Pine Island, turn right on Stringfellow Road and then left at the sign to Pineland. Follow Waterfront Drive to the Pineland Marina. >> Points of Interest: From pristine beaches to oak hammocks and ancient gumbo limbo trees, pine forests and mangrove swamps, the park offers both sea and key wild places, as well as historic cemeteries and evidence of Calusa Indian habitation. Overnight cabins with separate outhouses and showers ($40 per might), and primitive camping sites for tents ($22 per night) may be reserved seven nights a week. Bicycles may be rented for use on trails. >> What to bring: Water and food, sunscreen and a hat, changes of clothes if you stay overnight, binoculars and camping gear. Good walking shoes for the island's miles of trails. >> More information: Call (941) 964-0375. Or go online at www.floridastateparks.org/ cayocosta/.

Xú Florida's Babcock Wilderness Ranch (with the Bob Janes and Telegraph Creek Preserves):

 

While the public and private dealmaking that put together the sprawling Babcock Ranch Wilderness in Charlotte and Lee counties is complicated — and an additional 79,000 acres of the Fred C. Babcock/Cecil M. Webb Wildlife Management Area flanks it, with its own history and uses — the overriding fact of the matter is simple: This is almost 120 square miles of public space, breathtaking in its range of both flora and fauna, which continue to coexist with cattle and farming operations.

Part of the original ranch now owned by the state and counties includes 5,600 acres in Lee, which is called the Bob Janes Preserve to honor the long effort of that Lee County commissioner to create public land out of the old cattleman's empire.

And attached like an important body part to the southern edge of the Bob Janes Preserve is the Telegraph Creek Preserve of 1,700 acres.

"Telegraph Creek is an amazing palmetto prairie, with beautiful pine flatwoods running up into Bob Janes and Babcock," says Cathy Olson, a wildlife bilogist and manager of Bob Janes, where she's currently trying to identify a series of trails that can be improved for future explorers.

"Telegraph Creek is a wonderful paddle. There are steep slopes, natural, maybe six to 120 feet, so you actually feel the topography. And there is an unofficial launch site where Telegraph Creek crosses North River Road (in Lee County). It's a site owned by the Department of Transportation, and people can paddle up into the Bob Janes Preserve from there. The first time I ever saw this, it was like suddenly seeing a piece of old Florida."

Both Bob Janes and Telegraph Creek are included in Lee County's Conservation 20-20 program, which manages some 22,500 acres in the county.

Most of the creatures seen in one of these wild places can be seen in the others, Ms. Olson says, and the list is long: Virginia opossums, ninebanded armadillos, eastern gray squirrels, hisbid cotton rats, marsh rabbits, eastern cottontails, Florida panthers, bobcats, coyotes, common gray foxes, raccoons, northern river otters, feral hogs, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, bobwhite quail, double-crested cormorants, anhingas, great blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, little blue herons, tri-colored herons, cattle egrets, green herons, black-crowned night herons, white ibis, gloss ibis, wood storks, black vultures, turkey vultures, swallow-tailed kites, whitetailed kites, bald eagle, northern harriers, sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper's hawks, red-shouldered hawks, redtailed hawks, American kestrals, merlins, Florida sandhill cranes, killdeers, common snipes, mourning doves, common ground doves and the owls: great horned, burrowing, barred and eastern screech owls.

There are numerous other birds, along with alligators, musk turtles, mud turtles, box turtles, various anoles, skinks, snakes both venomous and non venomous, tree frogs (the green, the pine woods and the squirrel tree frog), and others.

Just as important as that knowledge for explorers, is this: Current access to the Bob Janes Preserve is easiest either through the Telegraph Creek Preserve on the south — by canoe or kayak — or from Babcock on the north, at trailheads on State Road 31 or State Road 74. There are no places to park, so far, where one could then walk in, although Lee County will remedy that eventually, official say.

Although all of it is public land, officials have not yet figured out how to manage it comfortably for people, and agricultural operations ongoing may not sunset until 2012. Thus, any who decide to wander into this wilderness on foot would be wise to use both map and compass, or to carry them as essential backups to a GPS system. And they would also be well advised to step carefully around cows or farm fields, should they encounter them, say land managers.

That said, there is no other place in Florida like this, insists Bill Hammond, who heads the environmental arm of Kitson & Partners, the developer planning to create a town on about 20,000 additional acres at the center of the old ranch (the footprint of development will actually include only about 7,000 acres, Mr. Kitson has said). Kitson & Partners now manages the public lands in Charlotte County, which will be turned over to a nonprofit manager within a few years, Mr. Hammond says.

A retired professor emeritus of environmental sciences at FGCU and the president of the CREW Land & Water Trust in Lee and Collier Counties, Mr. Hammond has spent thousands of hours on Babcock in recent years, and notes that he's been lost many times — occasions on which "you have to learn to trust your compass, even when you think it might be broken," he adds.

"Nothing here is ever the same any two days in a row. It's like seining in a mud or grass flat — you never know what you're going to see or get."

And the first thing to do in such wilderness is drop the fear.

"Part of the value of bringing people in to these places is getting them to feel comfortable," Mr. Hammond says. "Once they get over their fears — and fear is only what you don't know, more often than not — they realize those things need respect but not necessarily fear. Then they become open-minded, they open their eyes, and that's when discovery happens."

One of the most appealing aspects of this wilderness, perhaps, is the way it was once managed by the Babcocks themselves, who were hunters.

"They didn't create the classic rectangular pastures, the big cut blocks — they left a lot of edges. And ecological communities always exchange energy at the edges: critters are moving across them, in grasslands next to pine forests or oak hammocks or cypress strands. So the more edge effect you have typically, the more variety you have.

And variety is the spice of wilderness, it seems — especially in Southwest Florida.

.. if you go

>> Where: Babcock Wilderness Ranch in Collier County, with access off State Road 31 or State Road 74, or the Bob Janes and Telegraph Creek Preserves, in Lee County (see above for access). Contact: Charlotte County: For the Babcock Wilderness Ranch, call 1-800-500-5583 or e-mail www.babcockwilderness.com, to arrange private tours. >> Lee County: For the Bob Janes and Telegraph Creek Preserves, call 533-7455 or go online to www.conservation2020.org. Note: preserves and information about them are listed in alphabetical order. >> Points of interest: Almost too numerous to mention. Hundreds of species of both plants and animals exist here. Swamps, marshes, hardwood hammocks, cypress domes, palmetto and pine prairies and unique creek terrain all form the vast ecosystem in the region's public lands. >> What to bring: Wherever you travel on foot or in kayak or canoe, wear long trousers and long-sleeved shirts, hats, and good hiking shoes with laces. Take plenty of water, use both compass and map, and carry walking sticks or staffs. >> More information: See above.