AMERICA'S SUBTROPICAL WONDERLAND

Florida Bay and the Coastal Prairie

When you reach Flamingo, a former fishing village and now a center for visitor services and accommodations, you will be on the shore of Florida Bay. Here is an environment rich in variety of animal life, where porpoises play, the American crocodile makes its last stand, and the great white heron, once feared doomed to extinction, holds its own. The abundance of game fish in the bay has given it a reputation as one of the best sport-fishing grounds on the east coast.

The bay's approximately 100 keys (low-lying islets) were built up by mangroves and provide foothold for other plants hardy enough to withstand the salty environment and the sometimes violent winds. The keys are also a breeding ground for water birds, ospreys, and bald eagles.

Florida Bay, larger than some of our States, is so shallow that at low tide much of it is out of water. (Its greatest depth is about 9 feet.) The shallows and mudflats attract great numbers of wading birds, which feed upon the abundant life sheltered in the seaweeds—in a plant-and-animal community nourished by nutrients carried in the waters flowing from the glades and mangroves.

To the west beyond Flamingo is Cape Sable. This near-island includes the finest of the park's beaches (Shell Beach) and much of the coastal prairie ecosystem. A fringe of coconut palms along the beach could be the remnants of early attempts at a plantation on the cape that did not survive the hurricanes; or it could be the result of the sprouting of coconuts carried by currents from Caribbean plantations and washed up on the cape. For a time, casuarina trees (called "Australian pines"), which became established on Cape Sable after Hurricane Donna, seemed to threaten the ecology of the beach. But these invaders were mostly removed in 1971, and now appear to be under control.

FLORIDAY BAY AND THE COASTAL PRAIRIE. (elevation: sea level to 2 feet above sea level) 1) Red mangrove; 2) Black-mangrove; 3) White-mangrove; 4) Buttonwood; 5) Cabbage palmetto; 6) Hurrican-killed black-mangroves; 7) Fig; 8) Poisonwood. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Examine the "sand" of this beach. You will discover that it is not quartz grains—but mostly minute shell fragments. Entire shells of the warm-water molluscs that live offshore also wash up on the beach. There are also artifacts that speak of Indian activity in this area in past centuries, curled centers of conch shells from which the pre-Columbian Indians fashioned tools, and numerous pieces of pottery (potsherds). Both shells and potsherds tempt the collector. Shelling—that is, the collecting of dead shells, for non-commercial purposes—is permitted. But Federal law prohibits the removal of even a fragment of pottery—for these are invaluable Indian relics, essential to continuing scientific investigation of the human history of the region.

Back from the narrow beach is a drier zone of grasses and other low-growing vegetation. Some of the plants of this zone, such as the railroad vine, are so salt-tolerant that in places they grow almost to the water's edge. (No plant that is extremely sensitive to salty soil could survive on Cape Sable.) Beyond the grassy zone is a zone of hardwoods (buttonwood, gumbo-limbo, Jamaica dogwood), cactuses, yucca, and other plants forming a transition from beach to coastal prairie.

Birds provide much of the visual excitement of the beach community, just as they do in other parts of the park. Sandpipers, pelicans, gulls, egrets, ospreys, and bald eagles use it and the bordering waters for feeding, nesting, and resting. Mammals, notably raccoons, stalk the beach in search of food. And the big loggerhead turtle depends on it for nesting. In late spring and early summer the female loggerhead hauls herself up on the beach and digs a hole above hightide mark. There she deposits about 100 ping-pong balls—which should hatch out into baby loggerheads. Unfortunately for this marine reptile, however, most of them meet another fate. Hardly has the female turtle covered the eggs with sand and started back toward the water, than they are dug up and devoured by raccoons and other predators. These conditions created such high mortality of the turtles that the National Park Service has adopted special protective measures—removing some of the raccoons and erecting wire barriers around turtle nests. These measures have been effective, but continued surveillance is required if the loggerhead is not to disappear from Florida (as have several other species of sea turtles that formerly thrived here but have fallen victim to man's greed and carelessness).

THE FLAMINGO AREA. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

An abundance of raccoons and other predators is not the only threat to survival of the loggerhead turtle. A major factor in its decline is the serious depletion of its nesting habitat. Park visitors are, of course, prohibited from interfering in any way with these dwindling reptiles.

Cape Sable beach is today virtually the only wild beach in South Florida (thanks to its inclusion in Everglades National Park). At present, visitors can reach it only by boat. But it would be foolhardy to take it for granted that the beach will remain unspoiled. Its potential as an attraction is such that someone not ecologically aware might believe that access for motorists would be an improvement. Roads, however, would bring increased pressure on the ecosystem by large numbers of visitors, and demands for further development—for lodging, meals, and other services seem always to go with automobiles. With continued protection from such encroachments, Cape Sable Beach will remain a unique wilderness resource, and will not become just another recreational facility.

Merging with the beach is the coastal prairie, an ecosystem supporting red and black mangroves, grasses, and other plants tolerant of the very salty environment. Hardwood hammocks have developed here on Indian shell mounds, but the trees are stunted by the saline soils. Though there is no lack of water on the cape, much of the region appears arid because the hurricane-lashed tides have deposited soils of marl and debris so salt-laden that only sparse vegetation develops.