We Hope Your Thanksgiving Was As Great As Nelly’s, Our Resident Turkey Vulture!

Art and nature go hand-in-hand more often than people think. Previous artist in residence, Jan Kolenda, came out to touch up our tortoise statue. This statue highlights some important tortoise features such as their leathery skin that is adapted to crawling across land, their dome shaped shells, and the scutes that make up their shell. 

Great blue heron … Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Smyrna, Delaware … 8/24/20

This injured Burrowing Owl was brought to the nature center by a concerned Broward County resident to be rehabilitated. We were able to successfully able to release it back into the wild as good as new! 

This Burrowing Owl had an interesting feature that made it a unique visitor at our hospital. Most Burrowing Owls have bright yellow eyes. This one in particular possessed a recessive gene that gave it brown eyes instead. 

Bees are necessary pollinators for our natural environment. Without them, majority of the plants we that produce oxygen we need to breathe wouldn’t be able to survive. A world without bees is no world indeed. 

As part of our efforts to help slow the alarming rate at which bees are dying out, the Sawgrass Nature Center is 4.5 acres of nationally certified wildlife habitat. Part of that means we host many pollinator gardens. We even have our own apiary. 

Check out how you can turn your backyard into a certified wildlife habitat here: https://www.nwf.org/garden-for-wildlife/certify

And stay updated with our social media to learn more about the SNC’s own beehives and gardens. 

Sinbad

A fan favorite at the Sawgrass Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital, is Sinbad, a yellow-naped amazon parrot. The main mission of the SNC is to rehabilitate and release native wildlife back into the wild, but sometimes we have to provide permanent residency to the animals that come our way. Sinbad is a great example of two of the usual three reasons.

Previous Pet

In the wild, yellow-naped amazon parrots can live twenty to thirty years. In captivity, however, they can live sixty – eighty years. That means any potential pet owner of this gorgeous bird would have to plan for what is going to happen to their beloved parrot upon their death. Sinbad out lived two owners. The extended family of his owners reached out to the Sawgrass Nature Center for help and Sinbad became a permanent resident of the SNC.  Why can’t pets be returned back to the wild? Pet animals are usually captive bred and are totally dependent upon us for food, shelter, and water and may not be able to seek out these things for themselves. They most likely would not be able to survive on their own in the wild and may become easy prey to predators. This is why we should never just “let go of” an animal that we can no longer care for.

Exotic Species

As their name implies, yellow naped amazon parrots are not from Florida. This means they did not originate from Florida and were brought to the area by human intervention. Unlike invasive species, this exotic species does not have an established breeding population in this region and is not causing any inherent harm to our environment. In fact, you are only likely to see this particular species of bird in a place like a zoo, living as a pet, or in a nature center.

Because of the potential harm they can cause in our native ecosystem, it is illegal to release any exotic species into the wild.

Sanctuary Living

Sinbad, along with many other species, will spend the rest of his days being lovingly cared for by the dedicated staff at the Sawgrass Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital. He is provided a healthy and diverse diet of fruits, veggies, seeds, and nuts. One of his favorite things to do is serenade his caretakers in Spanish. He has also been known to give our Camp Director a scare or two by letting out a very good impression of a child screaming.

Interested in meeting Sinbad?

The Nature Center is open Tuesdays to Fridays 9am-5pm and Saturdays and Sundays 10am-3pm. To enter, a five-dollar donation for adults and a three-dollar donation for kids is greatly appreciated.

What is a Native Species?

Here in Florida, we are privy to a ton of unique and exciting wildlife due to our proximity to two very important natural features: The Everglades and the ocean. These two exciting ecosystems provide us with animals like Key Deer, the Everglades Snail Kite, and the Florida Panther that may not be found elsewhere in the world.

Any ecosystem or habitat in the world has native species. This means that the species arrived and has evolved in an area by only natural processes.  Other species in the ecosystem often evolved together and adapt to sharing an environment. For example, Florida Panthers and deer have adapted to sharing an environment together despite one being predator and the other being prey. It is a relationship they share and rely on to keep each other’s populations in check.

Unfortunately, not every animal we see in the wild is meant to be here. Take, for example, the Burmese Python in the Everglades.

An introduced species like the Burmese Python could affect the environment is several ways. They could adapt poorly in the new environment and perish, they could live within their new home and cause no major harm, or they could thrive with the lack of natural predators and outcompete native species. That scenario could mean that they could take the food, water, space, and other resources that would typically go to native animals. This would disrupt the natural balance in the ecosystem that has evolved over time. When this happens, the non-native species becomes invasive.

Wildlife hospitals like the Sawgrass Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital (SNC) take in and treat native wildlife, but it is illegal for the SNC and anyone else in the State of Florida to release non-native species into the local ecosystem. That means, the SNC can only admit injured or orphaned native animals for rehabilitation and release. Unfortunately, any non-native animal that might come our way would legally have to be euthanized or provided a forever home. Since we cannot always guarantee the space for all non-native animals and do not prefer to euthanize a healthy animal, we encourage finding other places that are specifically meant for taking in and sheltering non-native species.

The head stabilization of an American Kestrel   

Source                     

March is Women’s History Month and therefore the perfect time to share the accomplishments of amazing women like Nzambi Matee from Nairobi, Kenya. Nzambi is one of seven winners of The Young Champions of the Earth prize.  Announced in December 2020, this United Nations Environment Program initiative engages youth in tackling the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

Tired of seeing plastic waste littering the streets of Nairobi, Nzambi was determined to make a difference. She developed a mix of sand and plastic that when heated and compressed could produce bricks that are harder than cement. The building applications are enormous but as of the filming of this video she is currently only producing pavers. She hopes to scale the production and expand the use of her bricks.

Plastic waste is an environmental concern the world over. Our reliance on petrochemicals, single use plastics and cheap manufacturing materials has made plastics an increasingly dangerous threat to our biosphere.

You can read more about her work here: Building Blocks for a Greener Nairobi

References:

Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavender,’Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made’,(Science Advances  19 Jul 2017: Vol. 3, no. 7, e1700782)

Hayden K. Webb, Jaimys Arnott, Russell J. Crawford and Elena P. Ivanova, ‘Plastic Degradation and Its Environmental Implications with Special Reference to Poly(ethylene terephthalate),’, (Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, 28 December 2012)

The Sawgrass Nature Center was notified via email today that we will be one of the many businesses featured on the Female-Founded Business Finder. This is a joint project between the Stacy’s Rise Project and the Hello Alice social business platform. The directory is featuring businesses run and founded by women. It can be found by scanning the QR Code on a bag of Stacy’s Pita Chips during the month of November or by clicking here:  www.femalefounderfinder.com. 

It is important for women to come together and support each other to close the gap between genders in leadership. We are proud to promote this business finder and other businesses of all backgrounds being run by women for women. 

Friendly reminder that the Sawgrass Nature Center (legally Coral Springs Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital) is a non-profit, charitable organization that runs on donations and is dedicated to the conservation of wildlife and environmental stewardship. We rehabilitate and released injured, sick, or orphaned wildlife brought to us by the surrounding communities. We also provide a home to over 100 non-releasable animals due to permanent injuries or their non-native status. Our education department is responsible for organize on and offsite programming as well as developing a program to provide free educational and professional development resources to Title I schools in South Florida. 

Feel free to check us out on our website, or like us on social media. We really appreciate the support :)