IF YOU GO
Respect Your Mother Earth Fest is 2 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Florida International University's Ecosystem Preserve across from the recreation center on the campus, 11200 SW Eighth St. There will be tours, music, a silent auction and food. For information, call 305-348-3732.To learn about the preserve, visit www.fiu.edu/%7E-envstud/preserve/.For his Eagle Scout project, Palmetto High senior Stephen Leatherman Jr. raised $981 and spent 173 hours last fall creating two handsome mahogany signs and 17 smaller trail signs for the South Florida Ecosystem Preserve at Florida International University.
Melissa Abdo, a graduate student in environmental studies whose internship requires overseeing the reserve, has devoted two years to removing exotics, raising and planting native fern and documenting 40 new species in the preserve.
Jack Parker, emeritus professor at FIU who started the preserve in 1978, raised $6,000 at his retirement party last November to benefit the Preserve Student Internship Endowment.
Thursday, this small piece of nature on a big urban campus that inspired such work and devotion will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a Respect Your Mother Earth Fest during FIU's Earth Week.
The seven-acre ecological oasis is on the south side of the university campus. It includes a butterfly garden, a trail system, three ecosystems and a small adjacent lake. To stand in the hardwood hammock on a spring afternoon is to be transported from the school's bustling campus to a woods filled with Jamaica dogwood, paradise and tamarind trees, mahoganies, inkwood, sabal palms and live oaks bristling with bromeliads and ferns.
Adbo, who organized volunteer workdays for clearing exotics, also wrote a management plan for the preserve. She will be among the volunteers leading Earth Fest tours. In addition to the hammock, the preserve includes a pinelands graced with young and healthy Dade County pines and a wetlands area that once was part of the greater Everglades ecosystem.
Abdo has written her graduate independent study about the importance of such areas as the Ecosystem Preserve.
''In South Florida we have very little of our original rockland ecosystems remaining,'' she said. ``Less than 2 percent exists outside Everglades National Park.''
The Ecosystem Preserve is maintained by volunteers who do the sweaty, back-breaking removal of exotics as well as planting, mulching and trail maintenance. More than two dozen new species of plants have been cataloged in the last two years.
The area was officially designated a Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation in 1987. In 1988, Mabel Miller, an environmental educator, developed a trail route and trail guide. For the last two years, members of the Tropical Audubon Society have included the area in the Christmas bird count, and some 95 species of birds have been spotted here (as well as 45 species of butterflies).
In its three decades, the nature spot has weathered Hurricane Andrew, arson of its hand-built chickee, hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, and various other assaults, especially from exotic invasive plants.
Joel Heinen, chair of the Department of Environmental Studies and head of a faculty committee to work on the preserve, says the southern portion -- the hardwood hammock -- is being eyed as a potential site for a football field. In years past, proposals to build fraternity houses and other buildings have rallied the faculty's most vocal environmentalists.
Last year, Heinen said, more than 3,000 students used the preserve as part of a formal class, ranging from art and architecture to earth studies.
A handsome new website (www.fiu.edu/%7Eenvstud/preserve/) lists all the plants, birds and butterflies that have been recorded in the preserve. It also shows photos of the campus when the old Tamiami Airport runways were in place and includes a detailed history.
Five years ago, a master plan was devised that envisions bigger trails, more signs, a jogging trail, picnic area and a small educational structure. Heinen is trying to raise money to implement that plan. The cost would be $1.2 million, said Heinen, although only half of that has to be raised because the state will match it.
So far, $30,000 has been raised for the endowment. The Earth Day event will include a silent auction, with proceeds going to the endowment. In the meantime, in an increasingly urban South Florida, Abdo recently found in the preserve five of South Florida's 14 native tillandsias (bromeliads), a native endangered vine with pretty red flowers called ''man-in-the-ground'' and even a gray fox.
Abdo did her master's independent study project on the importance of small, fragmented islands of nature. Their importance increases as rising sea levels and global warming change the South Florida landscape, she said.
''Only two of every three native plants are protected in large natural areas,'' Abdo said. ``As sea levels rise, plants and animals need to respond to the change. The greater number of fragments, and even backyard habitats, the greater likelihood they'll be better able to adapt.''
