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Focus
Indian River Lagoon
Stretching 150 miles from Ponce de Leon Inlet in Volusia County to Jupiter Inlet in Palm Beach County, the Indian River Lagoon makes up 40 percent of Florida’s Atlantic coast. An area of immense ecological importance, the Lagoon is home to more than 4,300 species of plants and animals, and 20 percent of the mangrove forests in the eastern U.S. Nearly one third of the nation’s manatees live or migrate through the Lagoon.
The name, in fact, is a little misleading. Not really a river at all, it is in fact an estuary, a body of water with limited exchange with the ocean. Five state parks, four national wildlife refuges and a national seashore are found within its borders, including the nation’s first national wildlife refuge, Pelican Island.
Once home to a magnificent array of birds, coastal Florida was plundered relentlessly by plume hunters, poachers and vandals in the mid- to late-1800s. In 1901, state officials passed a law banning the killing of any non-game bird, but the destruction continued. By 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt created the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge—the nation’s first—it was the last brown pelican rookery on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Today, this 5.5-acre island is home to the brown pelican and the endangered wood stork, as well as several egret and heron species and cormorants. The island is also a refuge for the endangered green sea turtle and the threatened loggerhead sea turtle. |
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