This unique & important seabird hospital is crippled by rising property taxes, rising costs for food and medicine, few new volunteers that care to give up a bit of their own good time in the sun, to feed the birds, and too few dollar donations...but the birds ALSO continue to come for life-saving help!
Your "Wise Gardener" & Chef Brad were both moved beyond our own prior expectations, and we looked at this fragile Florida Keys environment, in a new and more environmentally-sensitive light. This sensitivity was reinforced, on our trip home!!
Driving north, towards Fort Lauderdale, we chose to take the longer "backroads" route, instead of using US 1, or the Florida Turnpike, (to, hopefully, see "real" nature!) We chose the environmentally "richer" Card Sound Road, or (C.R. #905) North, through Key Largo Key. We continued north, past "town", (a new shopping centre), and followed a sign that heralded: The Ocean Reef Club (1 and 3/4 miles). This road seemed promising at first. We passed numerous mangrove hammocks, and signs the indicated that this was now a designation part of the National Wildlife Refuge. I had read previously, in The Miami Herald, that this land was originally supposed to be the sprawling Port Bougainville "luxury" development, but this "atrocity" has, at least for now, been halted! Good; that's ONE victory for environmental causes!
We were intrigued; what development could be this secluded, and why hadn't we ever heard of this protected enclave before? We drove north, and were so surprised to come in contact with the Ocean Reef Club, where the "Taj Mahal meets South Beach"!! Serious security awaited us ahead! We couldn't enter but rather veered left and continued onto the Card Sound Bridge. What a "eye-opener", friends, it was! Pristine mangrove wetlands eco-system (outside the gates!), that was literally covered in trash!! What a mess!! All road bridges, that also afforded boat access ramps for fishermen, were covered in graffiti (in Spanish, mostly), and under these bridges, (at the boat ramps), was found a plethora of all sorts of consumer garbage, from diapers, to hamburger wrappers, to beer bottles & cans! I was becoming more ill by the moment, friends!
It is important to interject here, that this view was within ONLY a kilometre or two of The Ocean Reef Club (where empty lots sell for upwards of $4,000,000.00, we discovered, after we returned home, and did some internet "research!") How insane this all seemed! Selfish and egotistical ultra-millionaires who don't give a shit what is "out there", and their golf and boating estate homes (used only to escape the winter months up North!), inside the impressive O.R.C. gated entrance, while garbage continues to collect outside the gates, and WITHIN A NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE!! I was shocked & horrified...and incredibly outraged!! How dare such a precious resource as this subtropical aquifer and eco-system, be used so carelessly!
