Lemon Bay Conservancy

Making a Little Go a Long Way

Like the rest of Florida's landscape, Lemon Bay, the narrow body of water stretching seven miles from Gasparilla Sound north to Venice, is transient. Ten thousand years ago, with the seas still locked in polar ice, it was a dry, shallow valley roamed by Ice Age megafauna. Manasota Key and Don Pedro Island, the glorified sand bars that form its western shore, were deposited only 5,000 years ago. And not nearly so far in the future, if the polar ice melts again, the bay may be subsumed into the greater Gulf of Mexico, to appear on navigation maps as nothing more than an underwater channel between the mainland and the reef that was Manasota Key.

Between those two terminations, Lemon Bay has been a number of things. To the 300-plus species of fish, birds and mammals that dwell in its shallow waters or subsist upon its shores, it is home. To the pre-Columbian Calusa Indians, it was an inexhaustible source of nourishment and a sheltered seaway along a large stretch of their empire.

Lemon Bay was a source of livelihood and beauty to the early Florida settlers who inhabited its shores in the 19th Century. It was named for the labors of the Nicholas brothers, who came from Englewood, Ill. in 1884 with dreams of founding a citrus dynasty. A series of hard freezes in the 1890's dashed their hopes, leaving only a tiny village at the bay's north end named after their home town.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the population on the bay's shores was a scant 250. Bayside land could be bought for $30 an acre. Then the lumber industry moved in to fill America's ravenous demand for railroad ties, two-by-fours and turpentine. The sparse inland forests of slash and longleaf pines were soon denuded, and by 1925, the lumbermen had cut themselves out of work...as they usually do. They moved out, ranchers moved in and the former forests became rangeland.

No bridges spanned Lemon Bay until 1927, when the first was built at New Point Comfort, not far from the current bridge to Englewood Beach. The toll was 50 cents. What remains of it today has become the Ainger Fishing Pier, a Charlotte County park.

Even by the 1950's, when I entered the picture, the population of Englewood was barely 3,000. It was the home of my great uncle and aunt, a reclusive but friendly impressionist artist and his wife who lived in a small, beautiful cottage just a couple of blocks from the Gulf of Mexico. Though State Road 776 ran smack through the middle of town, you could shoot a gun down it and not hit anything most of the time.

How things change.

Today, Englewood, population 21,000 and growing, covers 13 square miles. The majority of Lemon Bay's mainland shoreline is urbanized, as is the rest of its watershed. The seven creeks that flow into the bay now carry a heavy load of fertilizer run-off and other contaminants. Flushed by only two passes, one at Stump Beach and the other at Gasparilla Sound, Lemon Bay is in danger of dying from the humans who have loved it to death.

Conserving Land, Protecting Wildlife

The Lemon Bay Conservancy began in 1971 after an attempt by a developer to build trailer parks on Peterson Island and Whidden Key, next to Stump Beach Pass. Covered with mangroves, the islands were roosts for colonies of shore and wading birds. Back then, environmentalism was a nascent movement; Earth Day was just one year old. But two far-sighted individuals, former Englewood resident Allen Eckert and the late Dr. James E. Cook, managed to raise $35,000 to help The Nature Conservancy buy Buttonwood and Rookery islands, which they then conveyed to Lemon Bay Conservancy. As those islands would have been stepping stones for a bridge, that strategic move protected the larger islands from development.

Thirty-eight years later, the Lemon Bay Conservancy remains a small - membership is approximately 250 - but effective progressive force for land conservation and wildlife protection in Charlotte and Sarasota counties. As the organization's current bylaws state, its goal is "to forever protect and preserve the natural wonders of Lemon Bay, Charlotte Harbor and its surrounding waters and uplands."

That's no small task, considering the bay's watershed covers 73 square miles, or two-thirds of the Cape Haze peninsula.

The conservancy has three main means to achieve its goal:

• Saving land by acquiring and managing coastal areas in perpetuity.
• Educating all residents of southwest Florida about the importance of maintaining and preserving a healthy environment.
• Advocating by being a staunch advocate for quality of life through appropriate land and water conservation policies, programs and practices.

Over the past four decades, the conservancy has acquired significant parcels of environmentally sensitive property along the bay's shoreline. In addition to the two rookery islands, they include four parcels on Mangrove Place in Grove City, almost two acres in Cedar Point Park and several parcels of land in Charlotte County's Harbor Heights, where the conservancy hopes to establish a sanctuary for the Florida scrub jay, the only bird unique to our state. A plan to purchase a historic Indian shell midden in Grove City is also in the works.

"Are we ambitious? Yes!" said Kathleen Rohrer, the conservancy's vice president. "We don't spend anything for land until we have enough to make an acquisition."It has also facilitated the acquisition of the Duisberg Trail property on Manasota Key and Lemon Bay Park in Englewood, both owned by Sarasota County, and the 80-acre Buck Creek Preserve near Rotonda, owned by Charlotte County. Such land doesn't come cheap. To be considered for grant funding to acquire the 60,000-square-foot midden, for instance, the conservancy has to raise $240,000, 10 percent down on the purchase price and an additional 10 percent set aside for continued maintenance of the property.

"When we see an opportunity, we like to pursue it," added Jim Cooper, the conservancy's president. "Right now, the timing is excellent for us. Real estate prices have never been lower. We want to acquire land to connect wildlife corridors across the state." Those corridors allow threatened and endangered species like the Florida panther to roam their natural habitats with minimal danger from human developments and roads.

Harbor Heights Preserve

In addition to giving the threatened scrub jay a large refuge in the heart of suburban Charlotte County, the proposed Harbor Heights preserve would also benefit other scrub-dependent native species, like the gopher tortoise, and complete a wildlife corridor extending to Lake Okeechobee. Many parcels in the refuge area are owned by people living out-of-state who may not be aware that scrub jay mitigation rules would force them to purchase equivalent property elsewhere before they could develop their Harbor Heights plots.

Right now, the area is a man-made mess. Rubbish, old sofas and yard waste - even a wrecked motorboat - have been illegally dumped along the few bumpy dirt roads there. Fire suppression has left it covered with invasive exotic vegetation like Brazilian peppers, and this past winter's hard freezes have left the brush tinder-dry. Fire is a natural factor in the maintenance of Florida's scrub biome, killing the sapling oaks that would eventually turn the scrublands into a dry forest. When the inevitable fire comes, it will be fierce, and hopefully not burn during the scrub jay nesting season.

Isn't Harbor Heights a long way from Lemon Bay, though? "We realized many years ago that the health of Lemon Bay depended on the health of Charlotte Harbor," said Richard DeGennaro, the conservancy's executive director. "The two connected bodies of water form part of the same estuary."

"Harbor Heights tweaked our interest because the lots were donated to us," Cooper said. "The question was, were they of any use to us? If not, we should sell them. Instead, we decided to focus on the whole area. It was the genesis of the possibility to do something a whole lot better."

"The Harbor Heights property was also an 'area of interest' on the Conservation Charlotte map," Rohrer added. "We work by initiating public awareness about a land conservation issue. We target it as an acquisition project, then attract partners to help with funding."

How You Can Help

The conservancy often focuses on acquiring small properties that might be overlooked by a larger organization. Partnering with local governments and major environmental groups is a "force multiplier" that allows the conservancy to have an impact beyond its budget or numbers. It's one of the few nonprofit organizations that use no professional solicitors or fundraising consultants. One hundred percent of each contribution goes directly to the organization's coffers.

Donations don't have to be huge. For a tax-deductible contribution of as little as $25, anyone can help the conservancy's "Adopt an Acre" program. In addition to the scrub jay refuge, donors can choose one of five other on-going projects:

• Completing the Cape Haze Preserve, a 42,000-acre wildlife habitat at the tip of the Cape Haze peninsula. Ninety-nine percent of the land is already owned by the state, DeGennaro explained, but small parcels remain in the hands of private owners. The conservancy is trying to acquire them to fill in the last squares of the "checkerboard."
• Restoring native vegetation and ponds on the 80-acre Placida Road property that was formerly the Wildflower Golf Course. It will become Lemon Creek Preserve and ultimately an extension of Charlotte County's Amberjack Park.
• Purchasing the Indian midden, to be known as the Grove City Heritage Village.
• Establishing the educational Tree Park Environmental Heritage Center in conjunction with North Port's People for Trees nonprofit organization.
• Increasing the conservancy's General Land Acquisition Fund.

The conservancy is also involved in a number of related projects, one of the most important being ongoing water quality testing in Lemon Bay. Others include sponsoring natural history conferences and environmental workshops, hosting lectures, providing educational materials and scholarships to students and monitoring local governments' environmental policies.

Ultimately, the conservancy's message is about hope, hope that wild lands can be preserved and that education will make Florida's current residents and future arrivals appreciate the wonder of our state's wildlife and natural environment.

"We have turned a corner," Cooper added. "People want a different way of life."