Florida Keys' Delicate Environment and Its Unsung Champions!!
© Paul, "The Wise Gardener!"
In Tavernier, Florida, miracles occur EVERY DAY!! Over 1000 various tropical seabirds like: pelicans, ibises, herons, egrets, and spoonbills, who have been mortally wounded due to assorted "too close" encounters with mankind and his artillery of spears, fishing line, hooks, beer can plastic holders, propeller blades, rudders, and other non-nature objects, must be provided hospitalisation with transplantation, surgery, wound repair, bone repair, fluids, and...food, food, and more food!
Their mission at The Florida Wild Bird Rehab Centre, is simply stated:
to reduce the suffering of sick or injured wild birds,
to reduce the occasions of their injury through education,
to reduce environmental hazards that place these birds at risk,
to increase the number of birds, both common & endangered, that are released to live in the wild!
A very small caring band of volunteers, led by a "young" 72-year-old woman named, Laura Quinn, provide these birds the emergency medical treatment, feeding, and the love, they require, or they would surely die!! In this mangrove estuary, the miracle of life is re-enacted many times a day! Armloads of fish are fed, twice a day, to hungry pelicans, ibises, cormorants, herons and other birds who could not survive on their own due to permanent injuries, like blindness due to fishing hooks & other dangerous boating encounters!! Tis the Fla. Keys Wild Bird Rehab Centre team to the rescue, again!!
Here, deep in a tropical mangrove hammock, a congregation, of wild seabirds, seldom seen in any such number, even in the storied and fabled Everglades, are regular visitors, often by necessity.
In fact, this environment is so kind to them, that rare species, like roseate spoonbills roost and breed here, like nowhere else in the world, literally! Yes, this a true place of daily miracles! Hundreds of majestic seabirds seek human refuge here, away from the hazards that nature never prepared them for.
At sunrise and at sunset, one can view mating of these huge, yet usually timid wild birds, as close as a metre away! I, myself, photographed these wild seabirds, without them ever fearing me, and we grew to trust and bond, it seemed, with each other! I visualised what it must have been like, here in extreme southern subtropical Florida, before 4 million of us humans lived here, year-round, and another 5 million people visit here each year! What an environmental overload! Our intrusion into their habitat has forever changed their world!
It seems like we OWE them this care, for our "insult" of their natural environment. We've come, gathered, and plundered, and left them virtually defenseless, I thought! Now, they are hurt and/or dying, and still WE multiply! Still we live this so-called, "good life", always at their expense!
The copyright of the article Florida Keys' Delicate Environment and Its Unsung Champions!! in Tropical Gardening is owned by Paul, "The Wise Gardener!". Permission to republish Florida Keys' Delicate Environment and Its Unsung Champions!! in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
