TrekEast Blog 5: Lake Wales Ridge, Central Florida

 

Sometimes Florida seems the most northern of southern states and the most western of eastern. The northern influences are largely cultural, as millions of people in recent decades have fled the colder climes of the Northeast and Midwest United States for Florida’s warm sunshine. The western influences are biological, biogeographical, and cultural.

 

Cycling north from Big Cypress on February 17 after a few splendid days of exploration there, I pedaled past vast open lands that could have been in the American Southwest, but for the alligators sunning along the channels by the road and the wading birds passing overhead.   Little known to most Americans is that Florida is a top cattle producer and has some of the largest ranches in the country (four of the biggest twenty, an Archbold Station biologist later told me). Nor can these ranches be dismissed as ecologically unimportant. Indeed, a top priority for maintaining and restoring wildlife habitat connectivity south to north and east to west across Florida is convincing ranchers to sell or donate conservation easements on their large land-holdings.    Successes have been made in this direction, but many more are needed. For a panther to successfully migrate north from Big Cypress, it will need to negotiate large, sparsely peopled but fairly heavily grazed, ranchlands. 

 

As a person inclined to eat low on the trophic mountain and critical in the past of the “cows versus condos” argument, this is hard for me to admit: From what Florida conservationists have told me so far, large ranchers in the state have tended to be good land stewards; cows on Florida’s humid grasslands do considerably less damage than they do on arid grasslands of the West; ranching is deeply woven into the culture of the state, and there simply isn’t enough conservation money to buy all the critical grass- and scrub-lands for strict wildlife habitat protection. So, along with conservation easements that protect wildlife habitat connectivity and ensure benign land management practices, other financial incentives will be needed for protecting wildlife, restoring natural fire and hydrological regimes, and generally keeping the landscape as natural as possible. My friends at the Wild Farm Alliance have done a lot of work in fostering wildlife-friendly farming and ranching methods; and Dan Imhoff’s book Farming With the Wild is especially helpful in this regard.

 

I had not the time or land owner permission to take a panther’s path across the Big Cypress to Lake Wales Ridge, or North Everglades Ecosystem, area; so I pedaled north on Route 29 till traffic became unbearable, then took smaller roads west of the highway. Route 29 is much better outfitted than is Route 41 (Tamiami highway) with wildlife crossings. Panther crossings signs with flashing lights are prominent in several places; and there below, wild travelers can find secure tunnels passing beneath the highway. Fences block animal movement onto the road in these key passage areas and direct them to the tunnels. Two of the passages were actually small bridges over water and beneath the larger bridges holding the road. These smaller bridges were covered in paw-friendly sand and looked heavily pattered with mammal feet.

 

Along with the need for wildlife movement,another vital natural element brought to me again on this ride was the need for wildfire. To my left, west, early in the ride a huge column of smoke rose out of flames that might have fried me, had I foolishly ventured that day into a prescribed fire zone. Most terrestrial ecosystems in Florida depend on wildfire to maintain health and species diversity. Natural fire return intervals in many forests, grasslands, and savannas of Florida probably were on the order of two to 50 years. Decades of fire suppression by land managers have essentially starved many otherwise still largely natural ecosystems of one of their most essential maintenance processes, wildfire, even as water withdrawals and canals have starved lands of their equally critical hydrological flows.

 

Land managers are slowly trying to reintegrate fire into Florida’s natural areas, largely through carefully set and controlled burns. (More later about the paradoxes of controlled burns, winter versus summer burning [the latter being more natural but riskier], and in general the intensive management efforts that may be needed to sustain populations of some of Florida’s more imperiled endemic species.) What I was gawking at over my shoulder was a prescribed burn in Fakahatchee Strand, no

t far from where I’d hiked (but not camped, thankfully!) the day before.

 

Near the northern end of Big Cypress, I noticed that the exit from the off-road vehicle trail west off northern Turner River Road that I’d wonder

ed about riding out of the Preserve was blocked by fence meant to be cat-proof. That m

eans about eight feet of chain-link fence topped by a couple feet of overhanging barbed wire. Apparently, incredibly, a dispersing male panther does once in awhile scale such a barrier. When I thought of trying to scale that fence while carrying my overloaded bike, I quietly thanked my parents (always advising caution in the face of uncertainty) that I’d instead taken the way a bike could obviously go.

 

After the Tamiami highway, the next major barrier for wildlife movement northward is I-75, Alligator Alley. This major east-west road is wide enough and busy enough that it would almost completely block panther and black bear movement north or south, had not conservationists succeeded in convincing state officials to install wildlife underpasses. These wildlife crossings have proven successful; but again, more are needed.

 

Just north of I-75, mostly on the west side of Rt. 29, is the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. Most of this is off limits to the public – a very rare level of restriction on federal land, here needed for the sake of the panther and other endangered species. Two short trails do provide enough access to get a sense of the habitat. These I walked, and was rewarded with fine views of pine/palmetto flatwoods, oak scrub, and other open habitats that again felt almost Southwestern. One sign on the trail had recently been chewed by a big animal – likely a black bear, for our ursine friends like to remind us, with strategically placed claw and gnaw marks and scat piles, whose land this is.

 

North from Panther Refuge, the ride grew steadily hotter and busier. My hasty estimate had been that I’d need to ride 80 to 90 miles that day to reach Archbold Biological Station. Hasty planning begets travel tribulations. By the time I reached the sprawling agricultural town of Immokalee, I realized I had longer to go than I’d planned for and needed to get off Rt. 29 before traffic became too thick and dangerous. I must also suppose that Rt. 29 from Immokalee northward becomes an increasing impediment to wildlife movement, east-west, as a creature gets farther from the wildlife crossings and into heavier traffic.

 

Little of excitement to report between the next sprawling agriculture town of LaBelle and darkness, except to share the important observation (from regional scientists and conservation leaders) that the dredged and widened Caloosahatchee River, over which I went by bridge as I left LaBelle, is a barrier to expansion of the panther population. Dispersing male panthers do somehow cross the river, but breeding females seldom if ever do. Some sort of wildlife bridge built over the Caloosahatchee (or perhaps in some better distant future, restoration of the original swampy shallow character of this outlet of vast Lake Okechobee) is needed for panthers to successfully colonize habitats northward. In the near term, active relocation of a few young panthers, including females, may merit consideration. At present, the whole breeding population of the panther, or cougar, in the eastern United States, so far as is known anyway, is in the relatively small area of Florida south of the Caloosahatchee River. They deserve much more than this.

 

Again, panther and bear and other wide-ranging species movement will also depend on conserving undeveloped lands north of Big Cypress. The greater potential is on the west side of Rt. 29, where most of the land is still in large ranches. Some of the ranchers here have already sold conservation easements on their properties; more need to be approached. Restoration of the Florida Forever land conservation program is of utmost importance. At present, development rates have slowed from their record-and-land-breaking pace of the 1990s and 2000s; but the platted unbuilt subdivisions will still happen, and more large ranches will be converted, where conservation easements or acquisitions are not made.

 

After LaBelle, I was able to ride smaller less busy roads northward. As dusk approached, the pavement of one country road I was pedaling ended, and I soon found myself again on Florida washboard, alternating with sand in which I fish-tailed. The pace was slow but the surroundings were semi-natural scrub habitat and the full moon rising, so it was a lovely, if wearying, late day ride. Neighbors I passed included an armadillo, who seemed to back away from the road in puzzlement as I, strangely lit creature on two fast but quiet wheels, whirled past.

 

I finally, gratefully reached Archbold Biological Station about 8 p.m., having begun the ride too late and underestimated mileage by a third. Strava’s GPS said I’d ridden and hiked 115 miles and burned about 6000 calories doing so. I quickly started making up my calorie and liquid deficit in the cozy little cottage the Archbold folks were so kind to make available to me. The natural evening sounds – cicadas, owls, whippoorwill, gentle breeze – were a welcome end to a day rich in sights but a bit too long in the saddle. Welcome, too, is knowing tomorrow I’ll be exploring southern Lake Wales Ridge with some of Florida’s leading biologists, and maybe even meeting a few Florida scrub jays.

 

 

For the Wild,

John