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>> On September 5th, 2017, Hurricane Irma became a category five hurricane, with winds
over 180 miles per hour, enough force to rip apart homes and offices.
Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency and called for
evacuations across the state.
Hurricane Irma was energized by the warm waters of the Straits of Florida and
turned toward the peninsula.
At Marco Island, forecasters were predicting a storm surge or
coastal flooding of 12 to 15 feet.
At 3.30 in the afternoon, the center of the storm hit Cape Romano.
By the time Hurricane Irma made landfall at Marco Island,
the storm had been reduced to a category three.
What happened?
A wind shear had pushed against the storm, and
coastal wetlands and conservation lands took the first hit, instead of human-developed areas.
Although the devastation was immense, these elements reduced the storm's impact on Marco Island.
There are many factors that help coastal communities to weather hurricanes and
other large storms.
One of the surprising factors that plays a critical role in protecting
coastal communities are coastal wetlands and forests.
According to scientists, the mangrove forests of Southwest Florida provide
effective protection and reduce flooding for coastal communities during storms.
You know, after the tsunamis out in the Asian, we've seen it here in South Florida.
The importance of forest, particularly forested wetlands,
related to storm surge and hurricane protection, and they can knock down waves.
They can protect shorelines from eroding.
They can protect housing that's behind the trees.
They're very important in storm surge and during hurricane season.
Adapted to life in harsh coastal conditions, Florida's mangrove forests are essential
to protecting the coastline of Southwest Florida.
It's mother nature out there and all those natural resources working in harmony
and healthy because that's what keeps them resilient against storms.
And that resiliency is our resiliency.
The mangrove forests surrounding Marko Island in Southwest Florida are part of the Everglades ecosystem.
Water from the Everglades pours into the Gulf of Mexico, often through bays.
The area where the ocean and brackish waters mix is known as an estuary.
It is here that mangroves thrive.
Mangrove trees are important for many species.
Leaves that fall off and decompose provide nutrients for the estuary food web.
Their roots are nursery grounds for fish, sponge and shellfish.
And their branches are roosts and rookeries for birds.
Rookery Bay National Esturine Research Reserve was established in 1978 to protect this mangrove
ecosystem as well as a place for scientific research.
Since mangrove forests make up much of the region's coastline, it was here that Dr. Robert
Twilly decided to focus his research on mangroves.
Mary Lugo offered an opportunity for me to work in the mangroves here at Rookery Bay.
And so I jumped on that as a topic for my dissertation and the rest is history as they
say.
Mangrove forests intrigued the young scientist.
You know mangroves have always been sort of one of those really unique features of the
landscape.
They're one of the only trees that can actually grow in salt water.
Dr. Twilly began his research in the early 70s.
Not much was known about the benefits mangroves provide.
The fact that we just didn't know the value of mangroves, what do they do?
What is the work that mangrove does for a society?
Research done by Dr. Twilly and others at Rookery Bay has advanced our understanding
of mangroves and their importance.
These forests, they take excess carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their wood or
they store it in the soil.
We start to understand the role they play in cleaning up nutrients that's in the water.
Their connections related to supporting fisheries, the wildlife and all the other biodiversity
aspects.
They provide their services for free every day.
They're a pretty good value proposition for a society.
The managers at Rookery Bay see the research on mangroves done by Dr. Twilly and others
as key to their own work.
The role of science is going to continue to be very, very important when it comes to
managing not just the resources that we have here, but in contributing to our better understanding
of how these coastal ecosystems are affected by people and by natural events like my hurricanes.
Our job is to really understand how these systems are going to adapt to these hurricanes
over time.
The more information we have about how valuable mangroves are, it helps us protect them better.
And Dr. Twilly sees the research reserve itself as having an important role.
It's very hard for us to really understand sometimes, you know, why do we keep these
landscapes, particularly the huge amounts of acreage that now is in the Rookery Bay National
Eustrine Research Reserve, and you can't get that perspective unless you have protected
lands and you have education in outreach facilities and you watch nature do its thing.
And if we don't understand that, then you really have no understanding of what you're
going to lose unless you know what they actually can do.
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Today, Rookery Bay National Eustrine Research Reserve is in public ownership and it is managed
by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in cooperation with the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The reserve encompasses an area about the same size as the Redwood National and State
Parks in California.
It is one of the few remaining relatively undisturbed mangrove estuaries in North America.
But in the last century, Rookery Bay was at risk of being developed.
After World War II, the city of Naples, north of Rookery Bay, expanded rapidly.
Between 1950 and 1960, the population of Naples tripled and Collier County doubled.
On neighboring Marco Island, the largest island in the 10,000 islands, the Deltona Corporation
began plans in 1964 to develop most of the island.
A coastal road was planned to connect the cities of Naples and Marco Island.
Well there was a development venture to build a loop road that would go through the Rookery
Bay area and essentially open up the area to waterfront development.
This 10-mile loop road would begin south of Naples at Bayshore Drive, cut through
Key Waden and then bridge three more undeveloped barrier islands before terminating at Route
952 north of Marco Island.
The road would effectively encapsulate Rookery Bay and demolish its pristine condition.
They thought it would not be nice to go down the middle of Key Waden, so that absolutely
horrified my father.
Laverne Gaynor's parents, Naples philanthropist Lester and Dolores Norris owned a cabin on
Key Waden Island and appreciated the island's natural beauty.
Not wanting to see this natural beauty destroyed, the Norris' began efforts to stop the road.
Their friend, the young Naples lawyer George Vega, wrote to the county commission pleading
for them to stop the road.
We believe it would destroy the character of this unspoiled area.
It would obviously destroy natural resources and as a road that goes out of its way to
lead to nowhere.
Vega and the Norris' dubbed the project the road to nowhere.
Knowing they would need community support, they started a petition to stop the road.
Meanwhile, the Collier county commission set a date to discuss the road, March 17th, 1964.
The day arrived and the meeting room crackled with tension.
First, Naples City Councilman and botanist Joel Cooperberg talked about the scientific
importance of mangroves at Rookery Bay based on a new study by the University of Miami.
Then, George Vega approached the commissioners with a bulky roll of paper, taped end to
end.
It was the petition against the road.
George Vega rolled the petition down the middle of the room or by the commissioners and
then up the wall behind the commissioners and he said, "These are the people who do not
want the road to nowhere.
Now, where are the people who want the road to nowhere?"
And it was dead silence.
The road was then eliminated.
Over 2,000 Collier county residents signed the 50-foot petition to stop the road.
But Lester Norris realized there was further work to be done.
The road may be blocked, but the land could still be sold for development.
And so, less than a month after they defeated the road to nowhere, Lester Norris invited
a group of his friends to his cabin on Key Waden Island to discuss this issue.
I believe there were about 15 people that had a meeting over at Key Waden.
The group decided to call themselves the Collier County Conservancy, inspired by the nature
conservancy.
And their first order of business was to purchase the land surrounding Rookery Bay for conservation.
The Collier Conservancy that became the spark plug around which much of the effort to protect
Rookery Bay was spinning.
With population booming in Collier County, the group saw the goal of protecting the land
as urgent.
When you hear the roar of the dredge and the harsh jarring sounds of the bulldozer, you
know our priceless environment is being destroyed for real estate development, to save Rookery
Bay, support the Collier County Conservancy, and help make this priceless beauty spot
into a sanctuary, forever safe for the enjoyment of you and your children.
Over 1,000 residents and many local business and civic organizations donated to the Conservancy's
campaign to save Rookery Bay.
There was a group of private citizens that ended up protecting it with a lot of partners,
a lot of help that nature conservancy, Audubon, a whole bunch of organizations came together
to support the local people to protect Rookery Bay.
Within two years of the petition, the Collier County Conservancy successfully purchased
over 2,500 acres of land surrounding Rookery Bay for conservation, for around $500,000.
They turned this land over to the National Audubon Society to be turned into a nature
preserve.
I mean, Audubon would not have had the money to go in, had it not been for the fact that
those people and Naples were willing to raise the money and make it work in terms of the
land acquisition.
And this was how the first part of Rookery Bay was put into conservation.
The undeveloped land surrounding Rookery Bay also protects cultural and historical
artifacts from destruction as well.
At Rookery Bay Research Reserve, the stewardship sector is tasked with managing these resources.
Those cultural resources are everybody's resources.
We go out and we find those places where the cultural resources are located and it spans
that whole panoply of many thousands of years ago.
The Mangro Forest of Southwest Florida have been a haven for humanity for thousands of
years.
For the Colusa and other Native Americans, the coastline was a cornucopia bounty.
Fish and shellfish were staples of their diet and no part of these animals was wasted.
The Colusa even utilized the empty shellfish shells.
They used their trash from what they ate for all kinds of different things.
The Colusa used these seashells to make tools, ornaments, utensils and other crafts.
But they also used them as building material.
When they threw all the shells away, near where they lived, they made these mounds, right?
These shell mounds are an iconic reminder of the Colusa.
Many Native Americans died due to diseases introduced by early European explorers and
Southwest Florida was sparsely inhabited until the late 1800s.
After the Civil War in 1876, a U.S. Army survey at William S. Henderson surveyed this area
to get plaque maps.
So the Creek, Henderson Creek, was named after him.
After that, they started tivvying out land through the Homestead Act.
The Carroll family was one of the early homesteading families to arrive in the area.
A chance to get some land under the Homestead Act was a big driver for a lot of people.
And it was that that really moved us from limestone or limestone creek by Arcadia in 1896
to move down into this part of Florida.
And so the Carrolls being practical people, they settled on Anderson Creek, bought into
a homestead.
The Carroll historian Ray Carroll is a descendant of some of the first pioneer settlers of the
Little Marco community which settled around the Rookery Bay area.
Early settlers tend to live on Indian shell mounds and occasionally where the geography
permitted they would live on the banks of a creek.
According to stories his grandfather told him, life in Southwest Florida during the
pioneer era was rough.
Sometimes the mosquitoes and the sand flies fight for supremacy.
And the human people are the losers no matter what.
In the early part of that period, the local economy was strictly a subsistence economy.
There were no jobs that paid a wage.
There were no banks where you could put your money.
There was no infrastructure of any kind.
I mean there were no roads.
Rookery Bay Research Reserve has a digital catalog of historic sites within its bounds.
It's a treasure trove of data and knowledge about our history that's there for all these
researchers to come in and utilize when they're wanting to do different archaeological types
of projects or just cultural research projects about humans and the connections of humans
to the land.
That connection of us to the land really makes us want to be here and do what we do.
In the 1960s and the 70s throughout the United States there was growing concern about
the health of the nation's estuaries.
In 1970 the Collier County Conservancy started its science program at Audubon's Rookery
Bay Sanctuary to study the estuary at Rookery Bay.
So we founded the first marine lab in Collier County and it was called the Norris Marine
Lab named after Lester into Laura Norris, who were the founders of the Conservancy.
The first science director was Dr. Bernie Yocal.
And I opened that station and began a series of baseline studies to look at how the tides
and the freshwater circulated in that region.
So Dr. Bernie Yocal was the first science director at the Conservancy of South West Florida
and he was hired primarily to do the research, the first comprehensive understanding of the
ecological functioning and value of Rookery Bay.
One of his key findings was how water upstream that flowed into Rookery Bay affected the
health of the estuary.
Rookery Bay is an estuary so you must keep your watershed reasonably clean and functioning
properly that is absolutely crucial to the life of a health estuary.
During this era the drainage basin or watershed for Rookery Bay was in a relatively natural
state and so Rookery Bay was considered a healthy estuary.
But some nearby estuary systems like Tampa Bay were struggling.
Because of the development that was occurring along the coastline of Tampa Bay we lost a
lot of the mangrove forests in wetlands, the salt marsh wetlands, a lot of the seagrass
communities in Tampa and as a result of the loss of those wetlands in Tampa the fisheries
in Tampa Bay collapsed.
At the time other estuaries around the country were also failing.
So it was Tampa Bay, San Francisco Bay, Chesapeake Bay and a number of others around the country
again in the early 70s, same thing happening all around the country.
Across the United States citizens realized that if they wanted to have clean and healthy
estuaries they must take steps to protect them.
People got really concerned about it so they were going to Congress saying we need to handle
development around estuaries differently.
In response to concerns, in 1972 Congress established a program to protect and study
the nation's estuaries, the National Estuarine Sanctuary Program to be run by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The vision was to set aside the nation's most pristine estuaries and use them as platforms
to conduct long-term research and then education to help people living along the coast understand
the value of these areas and hopefully make more informed decisions affecting the health
of these estuaries.
The research being done by Dr. Yoko and others was a key factor in Rookery Bay being selected
as a National Estuarine Research Reserve.
And it turned out that Bernie Yoko's research that had been done here at Rookery Bay was
instrumental in convincing our partners in NOAA that Rookery Bay was really the place
to focus on the designation.
In 1978 Rookery Bay Audubon Sanctuary became Rookery Bay National Estuarine Sanctuary.
It was the third sanctuary established within the system.
Today there are 29 research reserves across the United States.
In Florida there are two other reserves, the Apalachicola Research Reserve at the mouth
of Apalachicola Bay and the Guana Talamato Matanzas Research Reserve at the estuary formed
by these three rivers.
This combined acreage protects an area around the same size as Everglades National Park.
The research reserves protect over a million acres of our nation's estuaries.
The entire National Estuarine Research Reserve System is a real treasure.
I think collaboration is probably one of the most important things in the research reserve.
The strength of them is that network.
As the third research reserve established within the system Rookery Bay has broken ground on
many innovative programs.
And frankly I think it's one of the most important reserves.
It's had a lot of impact on the rest of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.
I would say that Rookery Bay was definitely out front on some of the programming.
And there are some concepts that have come out of Rookery Bay over the years that we've
been able to bring to the national level such as the coastal training program.
The research reserve also comprises two aquatic preserves, Rookery Bay Aquatic Preserve and
Cape Romano 10,000 Islands Aquatic Preserve.
Many species call this place home.
Rookery Bay to me is a sanctuary, the 10,000 islands, a remote, beautiful mangrove forest
and islands, barrier beaches, sea turtle nesting grounds, dolphins feeding in the shallows,
sport fish, snook, snapper, redfish, you know, thriving in these coastal waters.
And it happens on many different levels.
The first and foremost is sanctuary.
The overarching purpose of Rookery Bay Research Reserve is to serve Southwest Florida as a
trusted resource of science-based information and to foster a greater connection between
the local natural environment and human communities.
And it's really set up to enable long-term conservation, research and education of this
estuary.
The reserve has four sectors, tasked with working together on this mission.
The stewardship sector, the coastal training program, the education sector, and the research
sector.
Rookery Bay's research sector runs a series of internal research and monitoring programs.
Many of these are highly collaborative.
Take the sea turtle program, for example.
The sea turtle program is an exchange of resources between stewardship and research, and you'll
see that very frequently in a lot of other work that we're doing as well.
The program is both to count the number of sea turtle nests that we have within the reserve
boundaries, but then also to protect those nests.
Rookery Bay's caging efforts, used to protect nests from predators such as hogs and raccoons,
began on Capremano in 2006.
The hatching success has improved significantly since Rookery Bay's staff, interns, and volunteers
began this program.
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida also contributes data from their work monitoring sea turtles
on Key Waiden Island.
We've cooperated with one of their staff members now for the past 15 years to accumulate
data on nest temperatures in these turtle nests.
The facet of Rookery Bay's sea turtle research program is studying nest temperature.
One of the reasons why that's important is that temperature is a sensitive indicator
of what the *** of the hatchling sea turtles will be.
Rookery Bay's avian ecology program is responsible for monitoring birds within the reserve.
They protect some of the biggest and last remaining colonies of some of Florida's most
imperiled birds.
Audubon, Florida partners with Rookery Bay in their research and monitoring efforts.
Rookery Bay creates this protected area not just to give them the support that they need
to succeed, but also to study them and understand what's going on with these species and how
can we ensure that they persist for future generations as well.
An indicator of overall estuarine health is provided through the system-wide monitoring
program, including water chemistry.
This monitoring essentially takes the pulse of the estuarine.
There are data signs that are attached to pilings or poles and they collect information
every 15 minutes.
The collecting of this data never stops, even during major storm events like hurricanes.
It's a benefit of having those water level sensors in the Bay that we're able to operate
during that storm.
As such a long data set, scientists are able to compare what is happening in the estuarine
now with the past and during other major storm events.
Some of those early studies from after Hurricane Donna came through were actually able to repeat
now after Wilma and after Hurricane Erman.
A key part of Rookery Bay's research sector is working with outside researchers.
We serve as a platform for individual researchers to come in and ask their own specific questions.
Some of the best science that I've ever done, the most exciting questions that I've ever
been involved in answering, have all been done locally and Rookery Bay provides us with
another really cool place to work.
In particular, Rookery Bay has established a collaborative relationship with Florida
International University in Miami.
All members of the research team are FIU employees.
That enables them to immediately provide an exchange of information between FIU, which
is located in Miami and Rookery Bay, which is located farther up the western coast.
Rookery Bay is this fabulous living laboratory that allows us access to these great environments
for our educational programs and creative environments for our research programs.
It also allows FIU presidents to grow and call your county.
It is the education sector's responsibility to share the research sector's findings with
the public.
We're the sector that gets to experience all the cool stuff that the researchers and field
staff are doing and then we get to translate it into something that the public can understand
and appreciate.
The education sector hosts events and lectures at the Environmental Learning Center and manages
kayak and boat tours through the reserve.
We provide a naturalist guided tour.
Afterwards, the person has a much better appreciation for nature, estuaries, Rookery Bay and the
Everglades in general, because they've learned about it as they were seeing it.
They also host school groups at the reserve.
So here at Rookery Bay, education means, of course, school field trips.
Educators at Rookery Bay work closely with the call your county school system to ensure
that every student has a chance to visit Rookery Bay.
Whether you live in a mockily, down in Everglades, here in Naples are Marco Island in fourth grade
and in sixth grade, each of those students have the opportunity to go and experience
Rookery Bay.
Stuff work hard to provide an educational experience that is vivid and exciting.
They get to smell the smells, see the sights, touch the things, that kind of stuff.
They're really, really small, just little bumps and feels a little bit like something.
When Rookery Bay Research Reserve was first created, the local school system didn't do
field trips to Rookery Bay or even teach about marine science.
And we discovered there were no marine biology classes being taught anywhere in Collier County.
I reached out to some of the science teachers in Collier County public schools, and we developed
a partnership that really created the county's first marine biology curriculum.
Decades after the program's inception, many see it as a positive for local students.
Every single kid that graduates from Collier County public schools gets hands-on experience
in a boat learning about the environment, learning about research, and that makes them
better citizens.
So the other part about Rookery Bay is the long-term positive effect that they have on
our kids as they grow up and become adults, being sensitized to environmental issues.
That's a great way to affect all of our future and the environment.
The Coastal Training Program, the third sector at Rookery Bay, also focuses on education but
is geared toward a different audience.
We really do education, but just for that professional kind of audience.
We are providing science-based information, training, and tools.
Anybody who really has the ability to make decisions that are affecting a landscape scale.
The Coastal Training Program helps us with translating that science into actionable management.
This program was birthed at Rookery Bay.
The wildly successful Coastal Training Program for the nurse system was begun at Rookery
Bay, and so it's had a tremendous impact on the entire system.
In the 1990s, the staff at Rookery Bay wanted to expand the scope of the education sector.
We sat down and asked ourselves the question, are we really achieving our mission as a national
research reserve, which is about informed decisions about estuaries.
Gary Litten met with the education sector head Ginger Hinchcliffe to work together to
find a solution.
The original idea sparked over a cup of coffee, Ginger and I were kicking around.
How are we going to get from A to Z here?
And so we felt that there was a need for the environmental professionals.
So we created a series of workshops.
The first professional training workshop was offered in 1996, and we had a workshop on
watersheds, and we invited all these environmental professionals, and they came and drove.
The program was so successful that the state of Florida worked with Rookery Bay to create
a series of similar workshops statewide.
Soon, the research reserve system noticed the success of the program in Florida and wanted
to adopt it for all the reserves nationwide.
We had done a pilot, and it proved so successful, and people were just saying, you know, really
important niche, gave us money, and so in about 98, Congress based on this program actually
gave the reserve system new money to implement it nationally.
And ultimately now all 29 research reserves in the national system have coastal training
programs.
Rookery Bay continues to innovate with the Coastal Training Program.
CTP trains law enforcement officers from Fish and Wildlife Commission and other agencies
whose work impacts the estuary.
If you have a law enforcement officer who is more educated on what the rules are, then
they're actually able to take that into action.
They can actually go out there, and they can actually do a better job of protecting these
areas.
CTP provides workshops for civic leaders on hurricane preparedness.
We're working on coastal resiliency now, topics about sea level rise and hurricanes, and helping
our community leaders and those decision makers get the knowledge they need to prepare our
communities to be able to bounce back from things like a hurricane.
And CTP works to train landscapers as well.
As a partnership between the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and local stakeholders,
Project Greenscape is a program to train landscapers in conservation methods to reduce the impact
of landscaping on the estuary.
What we want to do is educate those landscapers so that they're putting out the right amounts
of fertilizer at the right time of year so the fertilizer states where it belongs in
their lawns, now running off into our watershed into our ecosystem.
Also assisting with community outreach and education is Friends of Rookery Bay.
For more than 30 years, Friends of Rookery Bay has played an important role in supporting
the reserve.
Friends of Rookery Bay is really instrumental to what we do.
They go into some of these neighboring communities that are right on our borders, some of these
large communities, and we'll do the outreach for us.
It's a huge value.
In the late 1980s, Governor Martinez wanted to create a legacy program to protect Florida's
environment.
Governor Martinez appointed Charles Lee with Florida Audubon and a handful of other citizens
on a committee to assess the issue.
He created an organization, a committee known as the Commission for the Future of Florida's
Environment, and it was chaired by Nathaniel Reed, the former assistant secretary of Fish
Wildlife and Parks in the Department of Interior.
This committee's decision was to start a new program.
One thing that all those people could agree with was to launch a major land acquisition
program in Florida, and that became known as Preservation 2000.
Preservation 2000 was enacted into state law 1989 and provided $300 million per year in
funding for land acquisitions statewide.
Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve immediately applied for funds.
And I remember very clearly getting our team together when Preservation 2000 legislation
was passed and the funding started, and we decided that this was one of the most important
things that we could accomplish was to work as hard as we could to engage the landowners
within our acquisition boundary and work with them to allow for the opportunity for the state
to make an offer on their properties.
One piece of property in particular that the state was eager to purchase was Key Waden
Island.
For years, the majority owner of the island, Laverne nor Skainer, had been trying to sell
her land to the state for conservation.
The years went by and they just didn't come up with the money.
But the selling price did not meet what the state could offer.
The lawyer I had, we'd look at what they were presenting to me and each contract was
not doable.
So she sold it to a family friend, Bolton D'Racket.
I knew that Mr. D'Racket was love the island about like as much as my father did and it
would be in good hands.
As I retired, came to Naples and others in the family got interested in Key Waden Island.
I took my interest in my part of it and my part I can define as conservation and preservation.
The state began negotiations with Bolton D'Racket to purchase the property.
It took us three years to negotiate the sale of that property to the state of Florida.
The Nature Conservancy helped facilitate the purchase.
We did that with the help of George Wilson and the Nature Conservancy.
George was instrumental in guiding that discussion and really in helping build trust between
the owners of the property and the state of Florida.
We were particularly blessed in this transaction by being able to work with landowners here
who really knew the value of a natural area.
After three years of negotiation in 1993, the state was finally able to buy the majority
of Key Waden Island.
We were able to successfully purchase that 2,700 acres on Key Waden Island for about
thirteen and a half million dollars, which is really a truly remarkable sort of crown
jewel.
It's one of the largest unbridged burial islands that we have left in the United States and
it's within the boundaries of the reserve.
I think the local community is extremely appreciative of people like that who have been able to
pass on a legacy from their family and other families before them that have all worked
very hard to see Key Waden protected.
At the turn of the millennium, Florida Department of Environmental Protection's land acquisition
program had expanded the research reserve to over ten times its size in 1990.
By the year 2000 when preservation 2000 legislation was wrapping up, we had secured 57 million
dollars of funds and we were able to basically expand our boundary from 9,500 acres where
we were in 1990 to 110,000 acres where we are today.
Really some strong leadership from Florida.
They provided state monies but also state leadership for a lot of the reserve work.
And we could not have done that without preservation 2000.
As workery they expanded, a new program was established dealing with land management.
So we got our team together and we took some steps to create a stewardship program here.
But I think it was Mike Shirley was our first stewardship coordinator and he sort of wrote
the position, you know, PhD, incredibly good scientist, really applied work though.
It was research but it was applied to land management.
Rookery Bay stewardship sector became a resource for other research reserves.
That ultimately became a model for the other national research reserves around the country.
Now all 29 research reserves have a stewardship sector, similar to the first stewardship program
that Rookery Bay piloted in the 1990s.
Today the stewardship sector at Rookery Bay has a critical role in translating science
to management.
So you're doing the science related things and then you're doing those kind of just
down in the dirt.
Invasive species control, prescribed fire and restoration are ways that resource managers
work to protect habitat and sustain native biodiversity.
Everything with invasive species proves to be difficult.
That's probably one of our biggest challenges and one of our most expensive challenges here
in South Florida is exotics, both animals and plants, flora and fawn.
Rookery Bay stewardship team partners with other organizations to help remove invasive
species.
One such collaboration is between the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and other research partners
to remove and study Burmese pythons.
It is a removal effort focusing on control in the future and developing new techniques
to get after this population of invasive snakes.
Researchers are working to better understand how to track this species leading to higher
removal rates.
We tracked our large male python grendel into this gopher tortoise burrow that was inactive
and he was coiled up at the entrance of the tortoise burrow which is usually a telltale
sign to us this time of year that there's more activity in the burrow.
Research on this animal that is very unknown is paramount.
How do you develop an effective control on a species if you know very little about their
general biology and their behavior.
So that's first and foremost.
We need the research to inform those decisions that help with removal or we're just sort
of moving in the dark.
This is the actual camera here that goes down the burrow and then all the wiring goes
through this tube and connects to this pelican case that houses the actual monitor so I can
see what I'm looking at.
That's why research is so important because we're actively gathering that information
that's working towards new techniques, new methodologies that will be much more effective
to control this invasive species across southwest Florida and beyond.
The rookery-based stewardship sector also works to remove invasive plants so native species
can flourish.
When we do exotic plant control, what we're doing is we're really trying to restore the
ecosystem.
These exotic plants, Brazilian pepper, malleuka, legotium, there's a whole list that goes
on.
When they come into these ecosystems they really change and impact it.
It turns it into a monoculture.
Nature does not like a monoculture.
Scribed fire is one way to control invasive plants but it has many other benefits.
Over the years have learned that periodic burn and is actually good, it puts the nutrients
back into the soil and it opens up the underbrush and it gives you more appealing too because
you get more of a vista.
Many native plants are dependent on fire.
And what the stewardship team does is they try to mimic natural patterns in Florida ecosystems.
Scribed fire rejuvenates the ecosystem and promotes wildlife diversity.
Another way rookery-based works to foster a healthy ecosystem is through hydrologic
restoration.
Florida's largest hydrologic restoration project is the Picayune Strand Restoration Project.
It is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Southwest Florida Water Management
District.
We're working very closely with the Army Corps of Engineers and with the District and other
agencies and a lot of other partners to be advisors with those guys as they tackle doing
the restoration for Picayune Strand and to restore the sheet flow across that area which
is hundreds of acres, right?
This project involves removing roads, canals and other man-made structures.
By doing this, water is able to flow more naturally through the Everglades into the 10,000
islands area.
But how do we know that this project is making a difference?
In 1996, Swiss researchers started a program monitoring shark populations in three bays
affected by the Picayune Strand Restoration Project.
The purpose of that 20-year-long program so far has been to look at the fish communities
in three bays in the 10,000 islands and evaluate maybe how those fish communities have changed
over time in relationship to the Picayune Strand Restoration Project.
We can show what the change in those fish is going to be over time, how they use these
systems differently as the watershed begins to restore through the area.
If the Picayune Strand Restoration Project is successful in restoring the watershed then
the shark populations in the bays downstream will be restored as well.
All these efforts from exotic species removal to prescribed burns to restoration work to
create a healthy ecosystem.
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Among the four sectors and other departments at rookery bay research reserve, there are
around 40 full and part-time staff who are responsible for the day-to-day operations.
Volunteers are also vital to supporting the reserve.
One such volunteer program at rookery bay is Team Ocean, a boat-based volunteer program.
These volunteers make weekly visits to high use areas in rookery bay, educating visitors
and promoting good stewardship.
Team ocean volunteers play a vital role in educating the public about wildlife, particularly
beach nesting birds.
They're there working as a volunteer for the betterment of that resource and by engaging
with boaters and other visitors, they are making sure that those chicks have a fighting
chance and they do.
Rookery Bay's volunteer program was even recognized by President George W. Bush in 2004.
This week we observed Earth Day and one way to honor the day is to honor those citizens
in our country who understand the definition of stewardship.
Citizens who work to make sure that our environment is as clean as possible.
My first task is to thank you for being such good stewards of Florida's natural beauty.
Thank you for not only protecting it but thank you for enhancing it.
Thanks to stewardship by rookery bay staff and volunteers, rookery bay research reserve
is a popular place for recreation and tourism.
As people visit this area, they are spending their money, they're staying in hotels and
it's all because it's a healthy ecosystem.
These activities form the backbone of the local economy.
Roughly 98% of the ocean-related jobs actually call your county are in the recreation and
tourism industry.
Many local business owners understand the link between a healthy ecosystem and a healthy
local economy.
It's there.
It supports my business and my business helps support the economy.
It's my livelihood.
So the health of the estuary is my livelihood.
The reserve also provides value in other ways as well.
Some find value simply in its existence.
I love the idea it provides benefits but mostly I just love that it is.
There's value in being.
For others, this area is a link to their past and family heritage.
It's a cool place and yet it's 100 years from what I do every day and I come here and I
can relax.
rookery bay is about legacy and learning.
Workery bay also has been home for me.
It's a place where I've always come back to.
Its natural beauty resonates with the human spirit.
It's magic.
You know it is one of those special places where when you are out there, your eyes dilate
a little bit, you breathe a little more deeply and you just have this sense of humbling privilege.
It is a place of protection and shelter.
When I think about that role, thinking about a refuge for manatees and dolphin, for a panther,
and I also think of it as a refuge for people.
For land managers at rookery bay, the task of stewardship is a responsibility not to be
taken lightly.
So we have to understand that we're not just managing from anglers today, we're managing
from anglers 50 years in the future.
So for rookery bay, all of us at our harder scientists, we always want to seek new truths
and learn new ways that we can do our jobs better.
At rookery bay National Esturine Research Reserve, scientists and business owners, citizens and
government officials, educators and researchers, tourists and locals are all the stewards of
Southwest Florida's mangrove coast.
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