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Randy Grau
“Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains; a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.”
-Aldo Leopold, The Upshot, 1949
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The Florida Keys Wildlife and Environmental Area is an archipelago
of small sites stretching 80 miles from Key Largo almost to Key West.
These sites contain some of the best examples of undisturbed tropical
hardwood hammocks remaining in Florida. Many of the tropical hardwood
hammocks on the south Florida mainland and in the Keys have been lost
to development because they occupy higher, drier land suitable for human
habitation. Tropical hardwood hammocks are the only tropical hardwood
forests in the continental United States and are among the most imperiled
natural communities in the world. This area was acquired to protect
and to restore native plants and animals, many of which are found nowhere
else in the continental United States and some of which are found nowhere
else in the world. The hammocks are critical feeding and resting areas
for scores of migratory bird species on their way between the eastern
half of North America and Latin America and the Caribbean. The tropical
hardwood hammocks are also important resting and feeding areas for the
threatened white-crowned pigeon that nests on isolated offshore mangrove
islands but finds its source of food in the hammocks. The berries of
the poisonwood tree are a main food for this rare bird. The hardwood
hammocks on the keys are home to the endangered Schaus swallowtail butterfly,
the exquisite Liguus tree snail, and numerous other rare and interesting
creatures.
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