A Place to Restore

Wildlife preserves near Lake Wimico and the Apalachicola River protect some of Florida's greatest natural assets.

by Kelly Margaret Smith
photography by Richard Bickel

It’s a simple pleasure to travel within a complex landscape and know you’re just one small piece of the puzzle. Floating on Huckleberry Creek just off Lake Wimico, the setting is lush and shaded, filled with layer upon layer of species-rich habitat from flowing water to still swamp to towering longleaf forest. Thick vegetation casts a reflection on the wind-rustled creek, creating a patchwork in shades of green, brown, and gray. “Landscape-scale conservation is just about putting the pieces together,” says Callie DeHaven, public land acquisition manager with the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. “And this is one of the most important pieces.”

Just south in Apalachicola, visitors who feed on the area’s celebrated oysters are perhaps unaware that it’s the areas upstream that nourish the tasty bivalves. The tidal marshes, floodplain swamps, and flatwoods around Lake Wimico and along the Jackson and Apalachicola rivers provide vital fresh water and nutrients to the estuaries in and around Apalachicola Bay, where the oysters thrive. “This area is so important to water quality in Apalachicola Bay,” says DeHaven.

Thankfully, there is now a gateway to this precious piece of natural Florida. Purchased by the state in 2003, the nearly 8,500 acres of the Box-R area include 6,000 feet of frontage on the Jackson and Apalachicola rivers. A more recent acquisition, Lake Wimico Preserve, encompasses more than 2,800 acres of critical habitat and frontage on Lake Wimico. Together, the landscape being managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) as the Box-R Wildlife Management Area (WMA) includes more than 11,000 publicly accessible acres of diverse habitat. The land provides a stop-off for migrating birds and a home for many protected species such as the Florida black bear, bald eagle, osprey, wood stork, little blue heron, Barbour’s map turtle, and alligator snapping turtle.

Protecting and Restoring Florida’s Wild Landscapes
The Box-R WMA was purchased as part of the St. Joe Timberlands–Florida Forever land acquisition program, through which the state has bought nearly 600,000 acres of land for conservation since 2000. Protected lands include natural floodplains, coastline, wetlands, forests, and greenways that support many threatened and endangered species. In this and many other cases, The Nature Conservancy helped shepherd the state’s purchase of property from The St. Joe Company.

The land is being protected and restored.  “Our management focuses on native habitat diversity, “ says FWC District Wildlife Biologist Philip Manor,  “One of our main goals is restoration, getting it back to a more historic, natural state.  In some areas, we’re managing old-growth riverine forests. That’s the easy part—we just watch it (the trees) grow.”

Much of the preserved land can be viewed from shallow Lake Wimico, which rarely crests over 2 feet. With the shorelines protected, all you can see from Lake Wimico is forest. This is a different kind of lake—markedly absent are the roar of personal watercraft and rows of waterfront docks. That’s because the majority of the shore is owned and protected by the state. “Seclusion is the lake’s greatest asset,” says FWC Wildlife Biologist and Box-R Area Manager Jerry Pitts. “This is one of the only places around here anymore that you can only get to by boat. You can see about a thousand stars out here at night.” Boaters access the lake from the Jackson River, and they can slip into the swamps and flatwoods in canoes or kayaks using the Huckleberry and Little Huckleberry creeks.

Boaters who paddle into the creeks, as well as those who travel on foot or bike following established roads such as Highway 385, can visit the upland areas. Here, “up” is relative—the upland longleaf forests could be just a foot higher in elevation than the flatwoods, marshes, and swamps. “A couple of inches can make a big difference in habitat,” explains Manor. Longleaf pine forests feel open, light, and airy. In their natural state, they are typified by towering pines above, lush grass and palm understory below, and next to nothing in between. Stepping into the open area from the dense swamp feels like taking a breather.

Longleaf Pine Resurgence
The FWC is bringing these upland areas back to their natural state primarily through the use of controlled burning. Historically, the longleaf pine ecosystem has been maintained by fire. Blazes caused by lightning strikes, which primarily occur in the spring, would eradicate the hardwood midstory that vies for space in the forest, allowing the longleaf pine and specialized organisms associated with it, such as the rare red-cockaded woodpecker and gopher tortoise, to thrive. Walking through a longleaf upland near Lake Wimico after a season of controlled burning, Pitts is pleased with the site’s progress. “This is what it should look like,” he says.

The Box-R area also opens for seasonal hunting, mostly for deer, hog, and turkey, as well as small game and migratory game birds. While there is no public boat launch, Lake Wimico is accessible via the Intracoastal Waterway (Jackson River), so those interested in fishing can cast for bluegill and shellcracker in the lake during the spring and summer. Largemouth bass, channel catfish, and bluegill are all available in the Apalachicola and Jackson rivers and their tributaries.

And Box-R is a paradise for bird-watchers, wildlife photographers, and plain old nature lovers. Pitts reports a recent spotting of an active bald eagle’s nest on the preserve near Lake Wimico. Though there’s no evidence of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker yet, Manor is hopeful. The FWC’s management plans, especially the reintroduction of fire to the uplands, will bring the landscape back to a natural state and encourage the return of native inhabitants.

History and Future
The landscape’s rich natural history tells the story of Apalachicola and the region. Here, land was logged first for cypress and then for pine. The land changed as industry and the country grew. The St. Joe Company purchased this acreage, as well as hundreds of thousands more acres, in northwest Florida during the 1930s and 1940s.

At the time the land was purchased, the Lake Wimico tract included a sawmill and railroad access—vital elements to The St. Joe Company’s business plans. The Box-R WMA was formerly known as the Box-R Ranch, the private retreat of St. Joe Company co-founder Ed Ball. While the area was managed for timber, its use as a retreat means that the natural habitat was not as disturbed as some silviculture sites can be.

DeHaven stresses the importance not only of protecting this site but also of broad conservation efforts to support the vitality of Apalachicola Bay. The bay is the final destination for three major Southeastern waterways: the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, and Flint rivers. Known as the ACF watershed, these rivers drain a significant region that reaches north into the mountains of Georgia, through Atlanta, down to the eastern edge of Alabama, and south to Florida’s coastline. Urban pollution and water usage upstream eventually can cause problems with water availability and quality downstream, threatening the local Apalachicola shellfish populations as well as recreational opportunities.

"It’s so important for people to know how much freshwater flow from Georgia and Alabama can affect natural resources and water quality here," DeHaven explains. "That’s why we all need to work together."