Q: Why do turtles spread their legs and feet out when they rest on logs?
A Red-bellied Turtle basks in Bird Rookery Swamp.
A: Turtles are cold-blooded animals, so they cannot control their body temperature internally. The only way they have to raise their body temperature is to bask to absorb warmth and vital UV rays. While heat is radiated to their bodies from their shells, they often stretch out their legs to collect additional heat.
Usually, their feet completely widen out at the same time to increase the surface area even more. They are able to engage in thermoregulation and their metabolism functions become elevated. As a result, the efficiency of their immune and digestive systems increases. Another benefit is that they absorb important UVB rays in sunlight. UVB rays become metabolized into vitamin D3 which is necessary to process calcium.
Like to bike? Well come out to Bird Rookery Swamp on January 9th, 2015 and join CREW Trust volunteers Peter Tomlinson and Jan Watson for a guided tour of the picturesque 12-mile loop.
View beautiful scenery, great wildlife, and enjoy the company of like-minded souls.
Activity Level: Strenuous-This is a trail ride on uneven, soft, grassy/sandy trails. Ground level with swamp on both sides of the trail.
BRING YOUR OWN BICYCLE: Mountain, hybrid or fat tire bikes are recommended. Not appropriate for road bicycles. CREW does NOT provide bikes for this tour.
Space is limited to first 20 riders that register, so use the link below and sign up fast:
* Over 38,000 visitors to CREW Trails
* Two amazing fundraisers brought in over $30,000
* CREW volunteers donated 3,906 hours
* 4,600 people participated in our environmental education programs
January 2014, the CREW Trust began its 25th anniversary, celebrating 25 years of land conservation and environmental education in southwest Florida. From the kick-off event in frigid cold weather last January to our final #GivingTuesday end-of-year fundraising campaign running through December 31st, this celebration has had something for everyone – a wine & cheese social and a BBQ for CREW members, trail events that included a variety of guided walks about everything from mushrooms to mammals, a geocaching day, a horseback ride through Flint Pen Strand, a guided bicycle ride at Bird Rookery Swamp, a Vitamin N Walk for families, a fabulous 25th anniversary concert featuring the Sarah Hadeka Band and Deb & the Dynamics, and our first #GivingTuesday fundraiser. Thank you to every one of you who volunteered, participated, sponsored, supported, and gave to CREW during 2014, making our 25th anniversary such a success! We look forward to the next 25 years…
Q: Are African honey bees here? Are they dangerous?
A colony of African honey bees chose to settle on a high tree limb along the Marsh Trail, where they do not pose a threat.
A: According to Dr. Jamie Ellis, entomologist at the University of Florida, approximately eight out of ten wild honey bee colonies in Florida south of a line from Tampa to Daytona are the African honey bees, often referred to as the killer bees.
No honey bees are native to North or South America. European settlers brought a temperate European subspecies with them when they colonized the Western hemisphere, and that species is the common honey bee. The African honey bee was first imported to Brazil in the 1970s by a beekeeper hoping that using a tropical subspecies from Africa would provide more productive honey producers in tropical Brazil.
Escaped queens enabled the subspecies to spread across South America, Central America, and the southern and southwestern United States in just 30 years. It is the most biological successful invasive species.
There are no visual differences between the European and African honey bees. The African honey bee is slightly smaller and has slightly less venom, but the two are so close that the only way to distinguish them individually is to send a sample to the University of Florida’s
lab for dissection.
Both subspecies defend the territory around their colonies, which is the only time the bees will be aggressive as a group. But when a European colony is disturbed, on average only 10-15 bees attack. When an African colony is disturbed, 10,000-12,000 bees attack.
Bees in a colony can detect vibrations in the ground up to 50 feet away from the actual colony, and the African bees can detect vibrations from heavy machinery such as tractors up to 100 feet away. However, colonies located more than 30 feet above the ground do not
usually pose any sort of risk.
When bees attack, it is always to defend the colony. Dr. Ellis said that the ONLY defense is to run away as fast as possible. Once out of the bees’ territory, the attack stops. Several dozen stings will be painful but not lethal.
Running is the only defense, and most people can outrun a bee. Do not stay and swat! The colony is probably close and attacking bees are attracted to movement, so swatting just attracts more bees. Don’t hide in underbrush because the bees can fit in there too, and don’t jump in water. Bees may stay agitated for up to 30 minutes after the colony is
disturbed, which is a lot longer than people can hold their breath under water.
If an attack occurs, survival is the only concern. It takes 5-10 stings per pound of body weight before the attack may be lethal, so barring allergies to bee stings, a 100-pound person could survive up to 1,000 stings.
Seek shelter in a building or vehicle. Some stinging bees may make it in too, but the number will be limited and once they sting, they die. If you see someone else being attacked, yell at them to RUN. If they don’t, do not try a rescue yourself because then there would be two
victims instead of one. Call 911.
Small Game Hunting Season at CREW opens December 7th and runs through January 4th, 2014 at the CREW Cypress Dome Trails, Caracara Prairie Preserve, and in portions of the Flint Pen Strand unit of CREW. Specific Small Game season regulations for CREW are listed below. Complete regs can be accessed at the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission website.
The Cypress Dome Trails will remain open to other users – hikers, bikers, geocachers, campers and horseback riders – during hunting seasons. Trail hikers are encouraged to wear bright colors (hunter orange) when hiking during hunting seasons. No hunting is allowed at the CREW Marsh Trails or at the Bird Rookery Swamp Trails.
Small Game Season:December 6 through January 3.
Permit, Stamp and License Requirements – Hunting license, management area permit, migratory bird permit (if hunting migratory birds), and state waterfowl permit and federal duck stamp (if hunting waterfowl).
Legal to Hunt – Gray squirrel, quail, rabbit, raccoon, opossum, armadillo, beaver, coyote, skunk, nutria and migratory birds in season.
Regulations Unique to Small Game Season-
Hunting with bird dogs and retrievers is allowed.
Hunting with centerfire and rimfire rifles is prohibited.
The CREW lands are open to a variety of public recreational use activities. One of the most historical and storied recreational uses of CREW is hunting. Hunting is an important wildlife management tool and provides many sportsmen and sportswomen a way to enjoy the outdoors and put food on their tables. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission has designated CREW as a Wildlife & Environmental Area (WEA) and regulates the hunting rules and seasons on CREW lands. FWC law enforcement officers patrol CREW lands all year long.
Saturday, December 13, 2014 will be a geocaching day with a twist at the CREW Bird Rookery Swamp Trails near Naples. Ten tokens will be hidden in ten of the 35+ caches on the preserve. Find a token and return it to the CREW Geocache Day leaders for a $15 general admission ticket to the 2015 CREW Concert on March 21st, 2015. Limit – 1 ticket per person.
Come out to the CREW Bird Rookery Swamp for this special CREW Concert Cache Day and enjoy one of the most wild and scenic landscapes in south Florida. The event starts at 9 AM with an introduction to the CREW followed by JunglePete’s famous geocacher icebreaker and instructions on how to use GPS units (if necessary). There are 35+ caches, plus new ones to be discovered. Bring plenty of food and water and wear appropriate hiking attire.
Required equipment is a GPS unit or a smartphone with the geocaching app. The event details and cache coordinates are available on the geocaching.com website at http://coord.info/GC5G33K. You can register there or on Eventbrite.
The March 21st CREW Concert and Silent Eco-Auction, featuring the Sarah Hadeka Band and The Juice, is the CREW Trust’s largest annual fundraising event.
Join Neil Wilkinson – FGCU instructor and current President of the Florida Mosquito Control Association – for our second strolling science seminar of the season, Mosquitoes of the Marsh: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly – on Friday, December 5th, 9 AM to noon at the CREW Marsh Trails. Registration is required. Register on our Eventbrite page here.
This seminar is about one of Florida’s most famous living creatures – mosquitoes. Learn the life histories of fresh floodwater and natural container species of mosquitoes common to southwest Florida. You will be surprised by the fascinating diversity of species and behaviors. We will begin with samples of adult and larval mosquitoes and learn about their life histories then hike into the preserve to check for adult mosquitoes caught in traps set the night before. We will use aquatic dip nets to survey for mosquito predators in ditches and depressions and be on the lookout for other amazing wildlife that the CREW marsh protects.
Enhanced knowledge at the species level is the basis for a greater understanding of the whole watershed system. We will have ample time to discuss issues related to controlling mosquitoes, types of control, and consider the impact of NextGen mosquito control products. Mosquito control, like watershed management is a classic environmental science case study. Humans impact the environment, often in harmful ways and as awareness and science progresses new options arise for ameliorating our actions.
Neil Wilkinson, is an instructor in the Department of Marine and Ecological Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University. Wilkinson is currently the president of the Florida Mosquito Control Association. He is an environmental educator with extensive classroom and field teaching experience at the elementary, middle, high, and university levels. He spends half of his time teaching a science outreach program to classes in the local school district. He acts as a liaison between FGCU, the Lee County School District’s Environmental Education Program, and the Lee County Mosquito Control District facilitating interagency cooperative and collaborative efforts among students, faculty, and staff.
Today November 6th 2014 a group of wonderful Florida Gulf Coast Students (FGCU) helped CREW Trust staff install number markers for the first self-guided tour for the Cypress Dome Trails. The FGCU students are currently taking Colloquium with Brenda Thomas (our wildflower expert). Their Service-learning project was to work with CREW Staff to upgrade and clean-up our hiking trails. We had a beautiful morning walking the 6 mile trail completing the yellow, green, and white loop.
The Cypress Dome Trails opened in 2008 and since then we have added benches, bird houses, short cuts, and now a numbered self-guided tour. The self-guided tour brochure was also created by a group of FGCU students for their Civic-engagement class. You do not have to do the numbers in order, just have fun reading the descriptions and observe.
Now visitors can download the self-guided tour map and brochure by scanning a QR code at the trail head or visiting this link before you hit the trails. Enjoy and discover the Cypress Dome Trails at your own pace.
*Give it a try and tell us what you think by commenting below.
