The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission's Aquatic Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Program generously provided the Refuge with a purchase of 1000 tons of lime rock and 600 tons of gravel for our hydrologic restoration project’s low water crossing improvements. Engineering Equipment Operators George Pelt and Jason Coates are coordinating the delivery and staging of this material.
Yes, this will cause some unsightly impacts to select areas. Once the lime rock and gravel have become part of that landscape it will look far less stark. Any aesthetic concerns can be directed to Andrew. (HE WILL SET UP A COMPLAINT BOX BEHIND THE DUMPSTER…) Staff members from the engineering firm Wood PLC continue to survey our Refuge roads and collate their information with Suwannee River Water Management District rainfall data to determine the options available to improve and restore the natural sheet flow of water across the Refuge. The Suwannee River Water Management District received the funds through the Florida Technical Implementation Group’s (originally Gulf Oil Spill monies that went to the State of Florida) USFWS grant funds for the engineering and design portion of the hydrologic restoration project on the Refuge. We anticipate beginning to analyze the draft restoration options this summer. Our work for these particular grant monies will focus on the Refuge’s public driving roads, not the grass secondary roads.
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Jasmin Muslimani is a Biological Science Aid at the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge, where she assists in conserving and managing wildlife. She is an undergraduate student at the University of Florida and is pursuing a degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation with a minor in Agricultural Communications. Before her time at UF, she was an Orthopedic Technician in the U.S Army and was stationed in Hawaii. As an enthused future Wildlife Biologist, she is looking to apply her knowledge, skills, and abilities to further understand and pursue a future career opportunities within a federal agency. In her free time, she stays active outdoors and likes to rock climb, cycle, hike, and enjoys primitive camping. She is excited about being part of the team at the refuge! Nicolle Montero is a summer 2021 Nature Coast Biological Station and Lower Suwannee NWR Forestry Assistant. She was born in Long Branch, NJ, and grew up in Orlando, FL. She is a recent University of Florida graduate having majored in Natural Resource Conservation with a focus on ecology. Nicolle is interested in pursuing a graduate degree but would like to explore different career opportunities to better understand her professional passion. Camping, traveling, hiking, kayaking, and playing volleyball are here favorite activities and Nicolle loves working in the outdoors and learning as much as she can from different people.
Brad Ennis runs the airboat over the low-tide mudflats and between the barrier islands protecting the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. A fat raccoon traipses among clumps of cordgrass. Fog limits Gulf of Mexico visibility to 100 yards.
“It’s been worse,” Ennis says. It’s supposed to lift by 10 a.m., three hours away. By then peak low tide will have come and gone and Ennis, with his band of University of Florida researchers, will have completed a morning’s work counting oysters on Lone Cabbage Reef.... ..."We’re at a tipping point,” says Peter Frederick, a newly retired research professor at the university who cofounded the restoration project a decade ago with colleagues Bill Pine and Leslie Sturmer. “We have fished out not just the oysters, but their essential substrate that supports them too. We’re replenishing both now. Ultimately, the solution is to get more freshwater. But there are many competing demands for that water.” Suwannee is the Swallow-tailed kite whose tracking device Friends helped sponsor. On his return from wintering in Brazil, he flew for two days straight, over the Gulf of Mexico to the panhandle of Florida, then came directly to the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge, as shown in the photo on the left. The photo on the right shows his flights around the Refuge since he returned. How is that for amazing!?
Refuge staff are busy, as usual. Today was another day of setting the woods on fire with the Refuge Prescribed Fire Team. Refuge manager, Andrew Gude reports that it was a very hot, growing-season burn. The heat index was through the roof. He was busting through dense brush with a drip torch and face planted . . . tripped by vines. His first thought: "Yeah right, like you can really see the rattlesnakes and water moccasins." That's our Andrew! The rookery at Snake Key is active, thus the area around the Key is closed to any visitation. Snake Key is not as large and does not have as many nesting birds as did Seahorse Key before its rookery was precipitously and mysteriously abandoned about this time in 2015. Biologist Vic Doig is conducting shorebird surveys. Summer interns arrive soon. This year, two high school Youth Conservation Corps workers and one adult YCC leader will be at the Refuge, as well as two forestry interns. The Refuge is seeking potential special funding for projects on both sides of the Suwannee River and within Cedar Keys NWR also. The active and long Lower Suwannee NWR hunt season, enjoyed by hunters from all over our region, the state, and the surrounding states, has ended.
Friends members Russ and Peg Hall hiked the Tram ridge and River trails on Saturday, April 10th. Here is some of what was there to see on that day. The butterflies were marvelous, and much beyond their ability, or their iphones, to capture for this gallery.
Friends members Marc and Barbara Woodmansee walked the Nature Drive recently. A visitor stopped them and asked what there is to see along the way. Here is some of what they all saw that day.
While you are out fishing, cruising or paddling in the next several months, you might stop to explore one of the many out island beaches of the Cedar Keys. But beware. You may be stepping into a shorebird maternity ward.
Boaters flock to Cedar Keys’ island-dotted waters because they know how special the area is. Shorebirds know this too, as it offers the isolation necessary for nesting. You can include at least four “threatened” shorebird species in that group. The American oystercatcher, for one, has a significant nesting concentration here, one of the largest in Florida. If you are walking an isolated stretch of sand, shorebird nests can be very hard to spot. The average person does not expect to encounter eggs seemingly just lying exposed. And yet, that is where these imperiled shorebird species often lay their eggs. Not in trees or hidden away in the brush but out in the open and on the ground. No elaborate weaving of twigs or sandy mounds. These birds rely on egg camouflage, pretending to be beach debris, to fool predators. It works sometimes to trick raccoons or avian opportunists. But that same blending-in-with-the-beach makes it easy for humans to unknowingly step on eggs. The hatching season generally runs from March through April. After that you have to watch for hatchlings through August. For most of the shorebird species that nest on beaches, there are 2 to 3 eggs, sometimes 4. It can take 20 to 30 days of parents sitting on their eggs to get them to hatch. If a human somehow causes a bird to leave that nest, the eggs could be easily snatched. A watchful winged predator could make a grab in a matter of seconds. Just forcing a bird to leave its eggs exposed to the sun, even for a short time, can cause mortality. Shorebird populations are declining yearly. It’s not just because of human intrusions but also the continuing loss of places where they can nest. Barrier islands are disappearing. Every single nest is critical. So how can beach visitors help?
You don’t even have to set foot on the sand to disrupt nesting. Just coming too close to a nursery area in a watercraft can cause birds to take flight. Like on land, it is important to keep that 300 foot distance. Should you witness deliberate shorebird harassment, please report such activities to FWC’s Wildlife Alert hotline at 888-404-3922. If you want to be actively involved with protecting shore or seabirds, check out flshorebirdalliance.org or contact [email protected] . Board member Barbara Woodmansee tells the circumstances of her recent encounter with a butterfly and a cottonmouth snake. It’s best told in her words.
“I was hiking near Steinhatchee yesterday (March 17, 2021) on a trail that had been recently mowed allowing me more visibility of the ground in front of me. A perfect and very hard to photograph Southern Pearly-eye butterfly landed just in front of me on the trail, but at a terrible angle for a photo. Pearly-eyes are very alert and will disappear into the swamp quickly if spooked, so I got down on my knees and started inching very slowly sideways to get a nice broadside view. While I was framing the picture, I noticed out of the corner of my eye something white waving back and forth just to the right of my elbow... Seriously, I was ONE FOOT away from this fatso cottonmouth (see photo above) with absolutely no clue it was there. It could have bitten me in the stomach or on my hip if it had wanted to. I just scooted back the way I came and we all parted friends.” Can you imagine how Barbara had the composure to photograph the snake after this harrowing experience? Leave it to a true naturalist to capture the amazing wildlife that surrounds us. "Let me introduce you to Suwannee, the Kite..." Debbie Jordan began as she intrigued visitors with Friends' projects at Suwannee Art Festival on Saturday, March 13. Both folks new to the area and long-timers were interested in learning more about our refuges and Debbie encouraged them to visit our website. A beautiful spring day and one of the first in-person events since the start of the Covid situation brought a good turnout.
Who Participated The 2021 Friends Annual Meeting was held on February 27 and drew participants from Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Minnesota, and Colorado, as well as from Florida cities including Jacksonville, Suwannee, Cedar Key, and Gainesville. That was an unexpected bonus, due to the pandemic, from having the meeting on Zoom!
Poll taking Two polls were administered throughout the meeting. The first asked participants how many had visited the Refuge during the pandemic (~55% responded in the affirmative) - that fit with Andrew's report that visitation was way up as people really wanted to get out and about, and the Refuge was one of the go-to destinations for north Florida folks. The second poll asked participants to vote on the proposed slate of officers and directors (100% affirmative). Welcome to the Meet and Greet Session. Click the arrow to watch the panel being drawn. Let's get creative Perhaps the most creative and divergent approach to this year's virtual meeting was the use of graphic recorder, Karina Branson of ConverSketch. The process involves drawing content-rich colorful illustrations highlighting the salient points of presentations and discussions. The end products, below, provide visually appealing documents for historical records of meetings. Click on the arrows below each panel to watch a time-lapse video of Karina drawing it in real time, as the presentation was happening. With the Welcome Desk still closed due to the pandemic and most community festivals cancelled, Friends merchandise has been unavailable to our members and friends for months. But fear not, we have recently opened the Friends Online Store through this website. We have started with a limited number of items as we learn the ropes of managing the store and fulfilling orders with an all-volunteer crew. This is how it works. We recruited a volunteer for each item that is available for purchase: hats, luna-moth shirts, trees-of-the-refuge shirts, swallow-tailed kite shirts, and soon butterfly shirts. Each volunteer has the inventory of that item at home. When the store receives an order, the volunteer who is fulfilling orders for that item pulls out the stash of the item, packages it up, gets the postage, and mails it with the USPS. This may not be slick, but we hope it works! We are delighted to be making the items available again so you can wear them and spread the word about our great refuges.
The Friends 2021 Annual Meeting is coming up on Saturday February 27 at 10:00a.m. It will be a ZOOM ONLY meeting.
You can sign up now. Email [email protected]:
On the other hand, you can attend even if you did not come south this winter and are still enjoying the snowy north country. You won't have to worry about rain, cold, or noseeums. And, in many ways the Annual Meeting will be very much like last year’s. Refuge Manager Andrew Gude will tell us what has been happening during the pandemic. Current president, John McPherson, and president-elect Peg Hall will provide updates on the many things accomplished by the Friends organization this year including:
Friends, Feasts, and Fishes: Facilitating Ancient Gatherings within the Lower Suwannee Region The topic is rooted in her archaeological research within the refuges and focuses on the fishing practices that supplied Shell Mound’s ancient gatherings. There will also be Chat Rooms where we can gather in small groups for open discussion. We look forward to receiving your sign-up emails and to seeing everyone at the meeting. |
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June 2024
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![]() Friends of the Lower Suwannee & Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges
P. O. Box 532 Cedar Key, FL 32625 [email protected] We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. |
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