Day 4:Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge

4^th March 2014

Refuge location: 26.4583° N, 82.1000° W, temperature: 27⁰C, sunny day with mild cool breeze.

The Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge is a sanctuary in the Sanibal Florida, which provides habitat to wild animals, migratory birds and native vegetation. It is also habitat for the largest undeveloped mangrove ecosystem in the USA. This is one of the 550-wildlife refuge managed by US Fish and Wildlife Services, which was established in 1976.The refuge consists of over 5,200 acres of mangrove forest, submerged seagrass beds, cordgrass marshes, and West Indian hardwood hammocks. Approximately 2,800 acres of the refuge are designated by Congress as a Wilderness Area.

 We were fortunate enough to visit this place and enjoy the natural beauty.The visit of Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge was a wonderful experience for me. That visit helped me to understand various conservation strategies and management of various habitats, mainly of mangroves ecosystem. 

Tiny frog hiding inside the tree

We reached the refuge at 9 am and started our day with a talk given by one of the refuge manager Ms. Toni. She introduced us with the history, present and future plans of the refuge. According to her, the wildlife refuge hosts 70,000 to 80,000 migratory birds annually. A total of 220 species of birds are recorded in the refuge.  However, in the past, high water  levels also provided breeding place for the mosquitoes for many years. In order to control the mosquitoes and provide adequate feeding habitats for  the birds the water levels are artificially kept balanced during spring and fall, but during the remaining periods the water levels follow natural tidal fluctuations. 

Similarly, in the past, a large flow of visitors created a problem by throwing away non biodegradable plastic bags.  Therefore, now  authority has banned plastic bags within the corridors of the refuge. Simultaneously, they conduct weekly cleaning activities within the refuge to collect plastic bags.  Due this effort by the authority and the involvement of volunteers the refuge  was mostly free from plastic bags during the visit.

Another good management practice observed was to close the refuge for visitors one day a week to reduce the impact of humans to animals. Moreover, the refuge's internal fund generating activities were also helping for the conservation and management of the wildlife through hunting, fishing, wildlife education and wildlife watching. The shooting, a wildlife conservation strategy, was found to be successfully implemented in the refuge. Refuge authorities were extensively utilising social medias, online resources and volunteers for the refuge publicity, conservation awareness raising and to involve local people in the conservation of wildlife.  

Anhinga pair

After a lecture from Toni, we went for a boardwalk and a mangroves trail walk to observe birds, alligators and floral diversity. The most exciting was to observe wading birds' activities on the mangrove trees from the tower. However, most scary part was to see paths made by alligators in between mangroves to move from one side of road to another side. When all were busy in observing birds, I was also concerned about the brown water in which mangroves were growing. I asked Ms. Toni about this and she replied that it could have been due to the degradation of mangroves. 

Brown water due to degradation of 

mangroves

While walking through the trails, we observed a rich rich floral and faunal diversity in the refuge. Plant species seen were Wild Olive (Olea. Oleaster), Wild Coffee (Coffea arabica), Red mangroves and Black Mangroves (Avicennia germinans). Birds observed include Anhinga anhinga, Black crown night herone (Nycticorax nycticorax), Green Heron (Butorides virescens), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), American Golden Plover (Pluvialis dominica) and American whitepelican(Pelecanus erythrorhynchus). Crabs were Horseshoe crab (Limulidae) and mangrove treecrab (Aratus pisonii). I was fascinated by seeing Red belly watersnake (Nerodia erythrogaster), Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis). Though it was more exciting to know that the refuge has three Bald eagles' nest, unfortunately, we  couldn't see any of them.

Mangrove's propagu

Afterwards, we went for a wildlife observation transit line drive. On the both sides of the transit line many other birds species including Egret, Pelican, Ibis, Heron and Anhinga were sited. At the same time, we got an opportunity to see West Indian Manatee again.

From the Refuge, we moved towards the Barefoot Beach preserve, which is also known as the habitat of many species of birds, butterflies and tortoise. The preserve is 342-acre barrier island, which is isolated from the mainland by mangrove swamps and tidal creeks. It is located along the Gulf of Mexico in the Northwest Corner of Collier County.  First we observed few species of trees and birds through boardwalk then we went for swimming. When rest of the group members were busy in swimming, I got an opportunity to see a few species of birds including Great Blue Heron, little blue heron, Ibis and Sandwich tern and snowy egret in the shore of Barefoot Beach.