Acquired Environmentally Endangered Lands

The Environmentally Endangered Lands Program, in partnership with Florida Communities Trust, acquired portions of the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands to preserve the natural mangrove coast, provide hazard mitigation, and to protect the County's water resources. These lands are part of a national and state effort to restore America's Everglades.

Biscayne Bay is a shallow, subtropical lagoon along the southeastern coast of Florida. The Bay is a fairly recent geological formation and the average natural depth was historically three to nine feet. Today, much of this area has been modified and dredged and average depths now range from six feet to ten feet.

The shoreline is primarily undeveloped and is lined with mangroves and tidal inlets. The rich fauna found Biscayne Bay results from the diverse habitats found in the bay. Extensive seagrass beds, mangrove forests, estuarine, and hard-bottom communities are found here.

In addition to fish directly important to man, such as snook and red drum, the mangrove and estuarine areas support a diverse collection of other fishes and waterfowl which are links in a food web which carries the rich productivity of the mangrove forests and estuarine zone out to benefit the entire Biscayne Bay ecosystem.

In 1962, a 50-acre parcel known as Castellow Hammock was purchased by Miami-Dade County for a park site. The most valuable asset of this site was the 45 acres of Tropical Hardwood Hammock. This core hammock parcel was only a small part of the larger hammock complex of which most was still owned by various private landowners.

The park opened an environmental education center in 1974. In the past 10 years, Miami-Dade County's Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) Program has expanded the protected area by acquiring strategic hammock pieces expanding the park to 110 acres, which has more than doubled the original size of the protected natural area.

Castellow Hammock is a popular park for birders, butterfly enthusiasts, and botanist-and also serves as a place for city dwellers to get closer to nature and rejuvenate the human spirit. Painted buntings frequent the bird feeders from fall into spring each year and hummingbirds are common in our hummingbird and butterfly garden in front of the nature center.

Historically, the native Tequestas paddled their dugouts down the river through pristine hammocks and through dense mangroves to reach the productive fishing grounds of Biscayne Bay. Today, the Oleta River flows through Miami-Dade's Greynolds Park complex and the State's Oleta River Recreation Area. This exceptional resource contrasts sharply with the high density residential neighborhoods and business districts that abut the parks. It is the only water course in the country that has not been completely dredged or otherwise altered.

In 1993, five properties along the Oleta River were identified for acquisition by the Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) Program. No site was pristine: their importance was their connection to the river and nearby parklands. Two are now in the public domain. On one 30-acre site in Oleta River State Recreation Area the owners planned to build a high-rise condominium on their property.

The property became entangled in a bankruptcy and in the savings and loans misfortunes of the mid '90s. Only then was the State, in partnership with the EEL program, able to acquire the parcel and maintain the watery wilderness within the State Recreation Area.

A smaller three acre riverfront site adjacent to East Greynolds Park was also acquired by EEL with a matching grant from the State's Florida Communities Trust. To restore the site to more natural conditions, invasive exotic Australian pine trees have been removed and elevation modified. The site now functions as a self-maintaining mangrove wetland, teeming with fish and wading birds.

By 1985, the Miami-Dade County had identified the 39-acre rockridge pineland on bustling US-1 as a place worth saving. County staff convinced the State to place the site on the list of conservation lands eligible for acquisitions, but there was so much land on the list and so little money.

Every time a development proposal for the site was presented to the County for review, staff negotiated for the protection of 4 or 5 acres of pineland in conjunction with the development.

The final development proposal for the site was part of a plan to add express bus lanes to US1. The bus lanes would sweep through the middle of the site, and frontage on US1 would be developed for businesses. An innocuous little plant changed those plans.

The deltoid spurge (see photo) grows only in the lime rock of Rockridge pinelands. Its status as an endangered species precluded the use of the land for road construction. This busway was relocated to the edge of the property and pineland. The Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) Program was able to purchase the property with 50% matching funds from the State's Preservation 2000 program.

The Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) Program has been acquiring lands in the South Dade Wetlands in partnership with the South Florida Water Management District and other grant partners since 1994. The South Dade Wetlands Project Area arguably contains the most important wetland system in the southern part of Miami-Dade.

Public agencies have targeted the area for acquisition because of the wetland's strategic location between two national parks (Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park) in the watersheds of Florida Bay, Biscayne Bay, Card Sound and Barnes Sound and because of the importance of the region to endangered and threatened species.

This region is characterized by low-lying, relatively flat terrain and pronounced wet and dry seasons. During the longer wet season eighty per cent of the rain in this region falls between May and December and the average rainfall is sixty inches per year. The soils consist of relatively thin layers of poorly drained marls and mucks over the porous limestone bedrock.

These wetlands are home to many of South Florida's endangered species. Species of note include the Florida Panther, the American crocodile, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, the white-crowned pigeon, the swallow-tailed kite, the Southern bald eagle and the Roseate Spoonbill.

Although the Everglades call up images of expansive sawgrass landscapes, there several types of wetlands here: spike rush and beak rush flats, muhly prairie, cypress stands, native dominated forested wetlands, tree islands, mangrove flats, hydric hammocks, and exotic dominated forests.

Natural disturbances, such as fire, play an important role in maintaining a diverse mosaic of vegetation communities. In addition, the EEL Program works hard to eradicate and control invasive vegetation though intense management and restoration projects.