Island ecosystem explained at first environmental symposium
Local conservation experts gathered last week to educate residents on the Estero Island’s natural resources.
Organized by Rae Burns, the town’s environmental technician, the first-ever Town of Fort Myers Beach Environmental Symposium featured five presentations by speakers from Florida Fish and Wildlife, the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife, and Turtle Time.
The talks centered around two threads: the environment, and the wildlife within it.
Fort Myers Beach is situated within Estero Bay, the first of 41 aquatic preserves in the state of Florida.
The 13,800 acres were designated a preserve in 1966 at the request of concerned citizens, and according to Rebecca Flynn, an environmental specialist at the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, the 40 preserves that followed were modeled after it.
It is fed by five tributaries that run through Southwest Florida, and all the run-off that feeds into these rivers eventually run into the bay.
“We have to take a pretty broad view because of that,” Flynn said of their approach to research.
She explained how they monitor water quality, seagrasses, and oyster beds over long periods of time and provide the data to the public online.
There are 46 sites in Charlotte Harbor that are tested monthly by a group of volunteers, all of whom go out at sunrise on the first Monday of every month to collect data.
“It’s an interesting monthly snapshot of the regional water quality,” she said.
They also use devices called datasondes which float in the water and take readings every 15 minutes, 365 days a year.
The preserve’s seagrass monitoring program is conducted twice a year, in February and August, and it monitors five sections of grass in the bay.
There are six of the seven Florida species of seagrass in Estero Bay, and they provide an important habitat for 90 percent of fish and shellfish.
Flynn said these seagrasses are estimated to be worth $94,000 per acre per year.
The preserve also monitors shorebird nesting sites.
Flynn described how volunteers go out on boats with binoculars and count nests.
They use this data to track nesting trends, and provide it to Florida Fish and Wildlife to inform the set up of Critical Wildlife Areas.
“They’re important for protecting vulnerable species that otherwise might not thrive at that site,” said Amy Clifton, a species conservation biologist at FWC, during her talk.
Fort Myers Beach’s south end is home to the Little Estero Island Critical Wildlife Area, one of six CWAs in Lee County.
The benefits of establishing a CWA, Clifton explained, is the ability to close off certain areas to the public during nesting periods and legally enforce it.
The LEICWA can be closed off from April 1 to Aug. 31.
Clifton and a team of volunteers post signs and rope off areas where shorebirds are nesting to create a buffer to keep humans – and especially, their dogs – at a safe distance.
Dogs can scare birds away from their nests, which exposes their eggs to the hot sun.
A nest without shade can result in cooked eggs.
More than 50 percent of Lee County’s more than 70 solitary nests are on Fort Myers Beach, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife.
Besides natural threats like overwash from high tides and storms sweeping away nests, the main threat these birds face is humans.
Feeding birds can attract gulls and crows, which hunt the eggs of nesting shorebirds, and chasing them can deplete their valuable energy.
Fort Myers Beach is a resting spot for migratory birds, and provides a place for them to recoup before continuing their long journeys south.
Baby birds are often discovered outside their nests when learning to fly.
“If you find a baby bird on the ground and you’ve identified where the nest is, you can pick it up and put it back in the tree,” said Rachel Rainbolt from CROW, Sanibel Island’s wildlife rehabilitation hospital.
CROW provides medical and supportive care to wildlife from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day of the year, with an annual case load of 3000-4000 animals in Lee County.
Anyone who finds an injured animal can call their office, and through a set of questions, staff can help identify the animal and figure out what kind of care it needs.
They also partner with 10 different animal clinics off-island that serve as temporary holding sites.
The closest one to Fort Myers Beach is Indian Creek Pet Hospital, where volunteers can pick up animals twice a day to bring back to CROW.
“We only have two or three people on Fort Myers Beach right now available to do rescues. That’s one of the biggest limitations for us,” she told the crowd.
Their average rescue volunteer? A woman aged 65 or older.
“We can train anyone,” she said.
Prospective volunteers can also call Turtle Time, a local non-profit that has been monitoring turtle nests on Fort Myers Beach since 1989.
“When I first started, there were five nests,” said Eve Haverfield.
Last year, there were 68.
Sea turtles like the Kemp’s Ridley dig nests two feet deep in the sand and lay 100-120 eggs.
Of those, one to four hatchlings will survive.
Any one turtle may nest up to nine times per season.
It takes the hatchlings two months to develop.
They all emerge at the same time, and head toward the brightest light they see, which should be the horizon.
Turtles that make it to the water get caught in long-range currents that cross the ocean.
“Thirty-50 years later, they come back to Fort Myers Beach and nest in same area where they were hatched,” she said.
Often, though, artificial light from buildings lures baby turtles away from the water and into roadways or the mouths of hungry birds.
“Any light visible from the beach will adversely affect sea turtles,” Haverfield said.
For this reason, Fort Myers Beach has a strict ordinance on sea turtle lighting.
“We recommend lights be mounted low to the ground, and they use bulbs that have a long wavelength, like amber LED lights,” Haverfield said.
She explained that sea turtles are an important part of our ecosystem.
Without turtles, our oceans would be thrown out of balance.
“What is good for turtles is good for people,” she said, summarizing the night’s main message.
When we take care of our ecosystems, we take care of ourselves, too.