Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary—EATING FLORIDA

For those Readers who are somewhat reformed couch potatoes and are eager to experience part of natural Florida without getting their shoes wet, or even dusty, the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in the Big Cypress may be the answer to their prayers. The Sanctuary is a place where even dedicated couch potatoes can relax because visitors can walk into the heart of the swamp on an elevated boardwalk and stay high and dry while becoming immersed in a wetland forest primeval.

By 1952 it had became painfully obvious to everyone who was even mildly interested that commercial logging would soon destroy all large tracts of first-growth baldcypress in Florida. Aware that the ever-increasing public outcry might slow their relentless plundering, the Lee Tidewater Cypress Company offered an option on 2,240 acres of pristine baldcypress forest to the National Audubon Society (joined with an association of 14 other conservation groups) as a sanctuary for wood storks and other endangered wading birds and then donated 640 acres more. Today, Sanctuary property under Audubon Society management has increased to 13,000 acres. The Society’s primary goal at Corkscrew is to preserve the natural ecosystem through extensive monitoring, prescribed burning, limited human access, and control of such exotic pest species as melaleuca (also widely known as cajeput), Australian pine, water hyacinth, and Brazilian pepper, among many others.

In all, timber companies hauled nearly forty thousand railroad cars of cypress from the Big Cypress Swamp in two decades. One rail car held between 60,000 and 80,000 pounds, or thirty to forty tons. You do the math (or I can do it for you — 1,400,000 tons total or 70,000 tons of baldcypress annually). Lumbermen loved to use cypress wood in construction, for railroad ties, posts, and roofing shingles because it was soft, light, strong, straight-grained, very durable, did not warp, and was highly rot-resistant, even under water. Cypress lumber was also used to make gutters, coffins, stadium seats, and pickle barrels. It was even used for the hulls of PT boats in World War II.

Because southwestern Florida’s water regime had been savagely altered by the earlier channelization of the Caloosahatchee River and by the diking of Lake Okeechobee, it took only a few years for the land to dry out after the big trees had been removed. Then one fire after another swept through the cut-over stands, destroying the thin soil down to bedrock, making reseeding and restoration of the baldcypress an impossible task. It took thoughtless, greed-obsessed people less than 30 years to effectively destroy a substantial part of the Big Cypress, an environment that had taken a minimum 5,000 years to develop naturally. Greed reared its ugly head once again and triumphed, as usual, aided and abetted by indifferent or intentionally ineffective State regulatory agencies.

Corkscrew Swamp’s 17 square miles is the last sizeable, contiguous stand of baldcypress left in Florida. Several of the individual baldcypress giants in the Sanctuary may exceed 700 years old. Those huge trees are over 130 feet in height and have girths easily exceeding 25 feet. The Sanctuary is a major nesting ground for endangered wood storks and is a haven for the rare swallow-tailed Everglades kite and also provides nesting sites for white ibis and the great egret.

The original impetus for the National Audubon Society in establishing Corkscrew Swamp as a sanctuary was to save the endangered wood stork and other rare birds. Between 1881 and 1917, perhaps 95 percent of the egret and other wading bird populations of Florida had been systematically slaughtered for ladies’ fashion accessories, especially to provide plumes for fancy hats and other elegant head gear. The only thing that had saved the few birds that survived was not the half dozen inadequate Federal laws prohibiting interstate commerce in birds protected by state laws, but the simple fact that, in 1917, New York whores began using feathers in their costumes as they strutted their wares on the streets. After that, no respectable society “lady” wanted to be confused with ladies of the night so feathers and plumage were instantly dropped from the fashion plates of the rich and social elites.

Nature lovers the world over owe a great debt of gratitude to those nameless prostitutes who simply desired to look upscale and high fashion. They inadvertently and unintentionally saved some of the most beautiful birds in America from certain and remorseless slaughter. And for that alone I hope that God forgave their sins, whatever they were. Unfortunately, the decline in the plume trade came too late for Guy Bradley and C. G. MacLeod, dedicated Audubon Society game wardens who were murdered by plume hunters intent on shooting out all the remaining rookeries in south Florida.

For the uninitiated but interested, it's relatively easy to tell a number of the large wading birds of Corkscrew Swamp apart. Though you’ll probably need a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to identify the similar looking long-legged members of the heron family. Wood storks are large birds with very large wingspans, about five to six feet in length. Their identifying marks include a white body, dark legs, a naked, dark ugly-looking head that earned it the Florida nickname, ironhead. Its long, thick dark bill curves slightly downward and looks quite lethal, especially from a fish’s point of view. It has black under-side wing and tail feathers. It often soars high overhead on thermals with its legs stretched behind and its neck out straight, unlike the slightly larger herons that fly with their necks held in a curved, S-shaped position.

The white ibis is about half again smaller than the wood stork and has a white rump and black feathers only at the very tips of its wings. White ibis also have reddish bills and legs. Great egrets are large, slender birds, though slightly smaller than wood storks, and feature all-white bodies, wings and tails. Their legs and feet are black and their straight, rapier-like bills are yellow or orangey-yellow.

As an inveterate bird watcher, I'm fascinated by wood storks. One reason I've always loved to observe birds is they can tell us so much about how our environment is faring. But, if you pay attention to what has happened to wood storks in south Florida you're likely to become sad, depressed, and maybe outright angry. Wood storks are truly amazing creatures. They time their reproductive cycle to coincide with the occurrence of shallower waters during south Florida's dry season, when the small fish and frogs they hunt are concentrated in pools as the surrounding marshes dry up. Unlike many other wading birds, a wood stork actively hunts by inserting its beak in the water and moving it about. When a prey animal touches the sensitive beak it snaps shut with lightening speed, about one-fortieth of a second, easily one of the fastest known reaction times in nature.

Before 1900, as the dry season deepened in intensity, the terrestrial dry-down progressed geographically, from upland areas in the northern part of its range to the wet prairies and eventually to the southernmost sloughs and lagoons. That almost linear progression across the vast Kissimmee-Everglades-Big Cypress Basin ensured a continuous supply of concentrated prey through the breeding season. That cycle practically guaranteed breeding success, as a single wood stork needed at least three to four pounds of fish/frogs each day to feed itself and its hatchlings. If it rained too much and the fish were disbursed or the dry season started too early and the fish population died off then the storks would not reproduce. So, the question is if the storks are so marvelously adapted to the specific south Florida environment, then why today has their population been reduced by more than 90 percent when compared to its pre-1930 population? What happened?

The answer is as simple as it is obvious. Humans have altered the land-water system for their short-term financial benefit. Dikes, canals, pumping stations, water impoundment areas, levees, large-scale agriculture, and urban development. We can sum up all these factors with a phrase for the ages: Water Management. What the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District had done was to effectively change the timing and duration of the complex natural hydro-regimes within the entire Kissimmee-Everglades-Big Cypress Basin. And thus they have artificially and perhaps permanently changed all the ecosystems of south Florida.

True, things are not as bad as they were 30 years ago when civil engineers ruled this land with a clenched iron fist. Or even as bad as 15 years ago. But, if you disbelieve those radical, doom-saying environmentalists and really think south Florida is on its way back from the brink of disaster, then why aren't the wood storks on a breeding splurge? Or why hasn't the Everglades snail kite made it off the endangered species list? If you take another guess it had better have something to do with the way Americans have mistreated central and south Florida.

Environmental education is another of the Audubon Society's primary missions at Corkscrew Swamp. And they do a fantastic job. The self-guided elevated boardwalk tour serves as the chief tool to educate visitors. A guidebook, obtained at the Visitors Center, illustrates points of interest along the trail and is complemented by roving interpreters who are available to respond to questions about the Sanctuary and its flora and fauna. Portable exhibits are frequently used to demonstrate fascinating tidbits of swamp ecology and their significance to the well-being of the entire ecosystem.

A two mile-long elevated boardwalk leads into Corkscrew Swamp from the northern-most edge of the Big Cypress. My advice is to arrive promptly at 7:00 a.m. and walk through the swamp slowly, savoring the almost solemn silence and the varied microenvironments. It is, after all, the last remaining stand of virgin baldcypress in Florida. Several of the giant trees in the Sanctuary were mature when the Spanish conquistadores first landed in the early 16th Century. A little quiet reverence or reflection would not be inappropriate.

Our pleasant stroll to the boardwalk begins through a stand of virgin pines located on slightly elevated ground. Their tall, dark, and stately trunks stretch straight into the sky. The transition zone between the pinewoods and the next microenvironment, wet prairie, is sprinkled with plants associated with moist pine flatwoods, including marsh pinks, meadow beauty, and Catesby's lily. Several hundred yards farther brings early morning visitors into a fog-laced stand of the smaller but still impressive pond cypress bordering lettuce fern lagoons. In the cottony mist you can see a profusion of epiphytes (air plants among which are orchids and bromeliads) hanging from the pond cypress trunks and limbs, including the ubiquitous but ever intriguing Spanish Moss, cardinal wild-pine, beautiful butterfly orchids, and ferns in incredible abundance and variety. Bromeliads, which belong to the same family of plants as pineapple, can grow in the ground, on tree trucks and limbs, or on the sides of rocks. They typically have stiff leathery leaves with a spike of bright flowers.

Minutes later, after transitioning through a stand of smaller pond cypress, you enter an immense baldcypress cathedral whose natural splendor simply takes your breath away. Magnificent, awe-inspiring trees tower overhead, several more than one hundred feet tall. The aura of almost sacred mystery is overwhelming, practically demanding that visitors contemplate what southern Florida would be like today if law or conscience had restrained the marauding timber companies. And don't we all know exactly what a fat chance that would have been, especially in the State of Florida.

I first brought my family to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in the mid-1980s. Just as we entered the densest part of the virgin cypress forest, we were treated to the ear-splitting roars of a nearby alligator, challenging only God knew what. It was a heart-stopping thrill for me but certainly more than a little frightening for all three of our kids, who were twelve, nine, and seven years old. Not more than five minutes later a small barred owl unexpectedly swooped low over our heads, landed on a tree trunk some 30 feet away and deftly snatched up a morning-chilled, slow moving lizard. With its breakfast secure in its beak, the owl then swiveled its head to stare at the small group of humans intruding into its space. As I watched, absolutely transfixed by the drama of the scene, the hapless lizard’s tail twitched wildly from one corner of the bird’s beak to the other. Well, coming immediately after the roar of the gator, the twitching tail hanging out of the owl’s mouth was about all the natural environment my finicky wife and kids cared to see. So, they departed for the car’s reassuring comfort. Which was fine by me since I had more time to soak up the magic and mystery of Corkscrew Swamp.

When the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary was established in 1954, it was in a remote part of Collier and Lee Counties and attracted fewer than 10,000 visitors annually. By the early-1990s, however, attendance surpassed 100,000 visitors annually, nearly overwhelming its modest sewage facilities. That inability to handle wastewater adequately presented an immediate problem that had to be addressed since Florida law required all facilities with that heavy visitor load to build appropriately sized sewage systems.

The recommended solution was to construct two small package plants featuring traditional technology that would work in tandem, both running full speed during the heavy onslaught of the tourist season and only one during the off-season. The problem with that solution involved not only efficiency and reliability but also the large amount of land needed and the system’s inappropriateness in a natural landscape.

At that point a scientist named John Todd suggested a patented wastewater treatment system called Living Machines that used sunlight, bacteria, green plants (such as alligator flag, arrowhead, pickerel weed, blue flag iris, and swamp lily), and animals (including snails, shrimp, insects, and various types of fish) to restore wastewater to pure conditions. Todd, a PhD ecologist whose work was inspired by the famous systems ecologist, Howard Odum, was founder of Ocean Arks International, which is a Vermont-based not-for-profit corporation that had been designing Living Machines for well over ten years. The system Todd proposed would occupy an area of only 4,900 square feet (a little more than a tenth of an acre), purify wastes without chemical additives, and recycle 90 percent of the purified water back into the toilets for reuse. Audubon was intrigued since Todd’s innovative system used natural processes and had the added value of costing substantially less than the conventional sanitary engineering approach. Construction began in May 1994 and was completed in October 1994. The Sanctuary has and continues to use the first Living Machine treatment system permitted in Florida.

The Living Machine has the added advantage of offering the Sanctuary wonderful educational opportunities. The entire facility is open to the public and is interpreted with illustrative signs and displays. Sanctuary officials feel that the wastewater treatment system is so attractive and efficient that it is an ideal setting for teaching water chemistry, natural wastewater purification, and recycling lessons to visitors young and old, consequently it fits flawlessly into Audubon’s environmental educational program and into its mission to preserve the last remaining baldcypress forest in America.

Implications

The wonderful lesson of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is that non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in this case the National Audubon Society, can work with private landowners and various government agencies to purchase pristine, damaged, or even broken ecosystems before they are irretrievably destroyed. For certain, those sensitive lands can't all be purchased and typically they can't be protected by single-handed and uncoordinated action. But by joining together communities, businesses, governments, partner organizations, and people just like us those fragile land-water environments can be preserved for future generations to use and enjoy and also to preserve in turn for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

I have adapted materials contained in The Nature Conservancy’s web site to provide just a few of the many ways the mission of environmental preservation can be achieved: land acquisition (known by real estate professionals as fee simple), public and private lands conservation, conservation easements, conservation buyer projects, conservation-friendly public policies, public land management, parks-in-peril program, public funding for conservation, debt for nature swaps, conservation (estate) trust funds, ecosystem services payments, resource extraction fees, public finance campaigns, and transfer of development rights. Those methods work. We only have to step to the plate and get involved.

Many environmental organizations regularly work hand in glove with local stakeholders (people like you and me who give money in amounts large and small), governmental agencies at varying levels, other non-profit organizations, international groups, and corporations with consciences and enter into unilateral-multilateral-bilateral agreements to buy and preserve fragile and sensitive lands. NGOs like the Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, and Natural Resources Defense Council among others are able to play critical roles in ensuring that environments that have present and lasting value are not thrown into the crushing jaws of development.

For the gift of the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary we all owe the National Audubon Society a debt of gratitude, despite the numerous failings of its sister organization, Audubon of Florida, with regard to the nearby Everglades. More on that debacle later.