Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast

The Conservation Foundation is a non-profit organization of land acquisition and management, focusing on purchasing and restoring our regions particularly vulnerable environmental areas. 

Our local Herald-Tribune recently ran a short back-piece on the Conservation Foundation's need for volunteers to help with the restoration of the Myakka River’s upper wetlands, to help restore them back to their natural habitat. So I volunteered - to get hot and dirty.

The Foundation's 432-acre Myakka Headwater Preserve includes areas of upland oak hammocks as well. There, some of the individual oaks were recently damaged and uprooted from Hurricane Ian's heavy path.

 

 

 

 

Across the Preserve, an upper marshland of re-introduced Tickweed (Yellow Coreopsis), Florida's designated State wildflower.

 

 

Walking through a multitude of native wildflowers while in Spring bloom, I fell for this handsome ‘Bull’ thistle, once commonly used as a tonic brewed for those with chronic indigestion. 

 

 

 

With gloves and shovels in hand, volunteers in route to help stabilize the eroding banks of the upper Myakka River.

 

 

 

A thick trail to the river's edge.

 

 

 

The main volunteer effort of the day was to help re-establish the native Pop Ash (swamp ash) found naturally along the upper Myakka, thus helping shore-up the river's fragile bank after prior years of cattle grazing and Hurricane Ian's recent devastating floods.

 

 

 

After carrying-in about a hundred potted, Pop Ash saplings, holes were dug and the designated river area was planted anew. 

With just a small group of volunteers, all gladly digging in, this important on-going restoration of the area's Myakka Headwaters Preserve took another major step towards restoring itself back to it's true, and natural wetland environment.