Please refer to the information below so you can help stop the surplussing of Oleta River State Park lands by the State of Florida.

Letter from Laura Reynolds, Executive Director of the Tropical Audobon Society:

Dear citizens of North Miami,

Tropical Audubon Society has been involved in the protection of land at Oleta River for decades.

Tropical Audubon led the fight to acquire the land which is now the highly-visited Oleta River State Park.  Support for the acquisition was led by Tom Pafford and Harvey Abrams who worked tirelessly to make it happen. Governor Bob Graham’s response to Tropical Audubon Society’s campaign to acquire the park was overwhelmingly supportive and he helped made it a reality. 

At the time, when the property was acquired on March 13,1980, the only dry land was a sprawling superfund waste site that had been used for casual and indiscriminate dumping for decades. Its environmental significance, a key criteria for all purchased state lands, was almost entirely based on the presence of the Oleta River and Biscayne Bay mangrove wetland forests –the last remaining stand of mangroves in North Biscayne Bay.  Oleta River State Park, bordered by the state’s Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves, is home to the tallest and arguably oldest red mangrove in the state.  According to the Blue Carbon Project, coastal vegetation like mangroves, dubbed “blue carbon”, can sequester carbon far more effectively (up to 100x faster) and more permanently than terrestrial forests we all associate with carbon sequestration.  Yet, for reasons such as rampant coastal development and alteration of our shorelines, we lose coastal vegetation at a higher rate than terrestrial forests.  The state of Florida should not only recognize this because protecting water and land is clearly stated in their mission, but the management planning efforts of both the park and aquatic preserve highlight the importance of these coastal areas as important to ecotourism and water quality. 

The investment of state, county, and municipal dollars as well as efforts from non-profit organizations such as Urban Paradise Guild has resulted in exotic removal and the planting of a creation of additional mangrove wetlands.  As a result and just recently, there has been an increase in the diversity of birds observed at this location.  In fact, Sam van Leer of the Urban Paradise Guild can boast pictures of the increasingly rare roseate spoonbill and endangered wood stork at home at Oleta River State Park’s mangrove wetlands.  The Oleta River itself is not only culturally significant but the mangrove wetlands that border it, up for surplus by the state, are incredibly vital to water quality and habitat for fish and wildlife.  Oleta River feeds into the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves, designated an Outstanding Florida Water, and is a key source of freshwater for the area.

At at a time when the state is faced with tourists turning away because of degraded water quality across the state, the state should not be in the business of surplussing ecologically significant coastal wetlands that provide ecosystem services to the people of the the state that would remove what little is left of this fragile habitat in the heart of Miami. 

We hope to see these parcels up for surplus within Oleta River State Park REMOVED FROM THE SURPLUS LIST.  We ask that concerned citizens send a letter to the state asking for these two parcels to be pulled off the surplus list. 

Send your email to both:

Susan.C.Grandin@dep.state.fl.us and ARC_mailinglist@dep.state.fl.us

Best regards,

Laura Reynolds
Executive Director
Tropical Audubon Society

Letter from Sam Van Leer, President and Founder of Urban Paradise Guild:

Dear North Miami Residents,

Urban Paradise Guild (UPG) was founded in North Miami at Oleta River State Park 5 years ago to transform Miami-Dade into Urban Paradise.  Our Volunteers have worked hard for thousands of hours to do just that.

Mangroves are the single most important component in the heath and well-being of Biscayne Bay.  We know this because without them, the Bay’s health has suffered. Up until the 1950s, witnesses commonly said about the Bait Runs that said “There were so many fish in the Bay,  it looked like you could walk on them. ” Every mullet and baitfish that ran fed the birds, dolphin and gamefish that filled our ecosystems, and this bounty of nature was a big part of the economic engine that made Miami a famous tourist destination.

That is why those with the insight about what we have lost understand how much there is to gain by doing restoration of Mangroves.

UPG was honored to be entrusted by M-D DERM to assist them with some of their projects at Oleta, and to this date we have planted around 7,400 Mangroves there and at Arch Creek East Nature Preserve. This morning, we worked with 8 Volunteers from the community, most of them senior citizens, on removing Exotics from the Preserve, which is a City of North Miami Park.

We really can’t afford to lose such a large and valuable public resource.

It is literally impossible to replace this treasure. The trees are mature, and they can’t be grown in nurseries or planted because of the complex prop roots. To just start from scratch, with fill land, it costs about $40,000 per acre to use heavy equipment to grade it to the proper elevation, and then planting (if Volunteers are not doing that). The 129 acres of the Oleta Annex would cost over $5,000,000 to plant with baby Mangroves, which would require many decades to grow to adulthood, and would never catch up with the trees in the Annex.

At a time when we have all seen Sea-Level Rise creeping into coastal streets on A1A and on Miami Beach, we should all be deeply concerned about protecting human life and infrastructure nearby. When Hurricanes strike (and they are a fact of life here), we will be very glad to have every Mangrove in place to shelter us from the worst of the Storm-Surge, responsible for so much harm from Sandy in NJ and NY.

I concur completely with Laura Reynolds of the Tropical Audubon Society in this matter.

Senator Gwen Margolis’ office has asked us to inform the public that she would like to be CC’d in comments to the DEP.

Her e-mail is margolis.gwen.web@flsenate.gov.
           
Please remove the Oleta Parcels from the Surplus List.
There are no surplus Mangroves in the area – please send more!

Sincerely,

Sam Van Leer
President & Founder
Urban Paradise Guild
sam@urban-paradise.org

“Creating Sustainable Paradise, one Habitat at a time.”
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