Little Town, Big Hearts

On a peaceful, but foggy January morning, more than 75 volunteers trekked to the edge of the Everglades, near Belle Glade, to plant native wetland trees on a stretch of land devastated by back-to-back hurricane seasons followed by extreme drought conditions.

Don’t know where Belle Glade is? With a population of about 15,000 a lot of people don’t. It’s a small rural community located at the southernmost point of Lake Okeechobee. Agriculture drives their economy, due to the rich, black soil commonly referred to as muck that crops prosper in.

The people in Belle Glade are as passionate about restoring Lake Okeechobee and the wildlife habitats surrounding the lake as they are about their own community. So in celebration of Florida Arbor Day last week, the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation organized the planting of 250 pond apple trees on Torry Island, near the Belle Glade Marina. Volunteers from the Marshall Foundation, a local elementary school, a Girl Scout troop and DEP’s Southeast District Office teamed up in pairs and set out to the island to take on the plantings.

Armed with shovels, the teams cleared out the dried up vegetation in the designated planting spots, and within two hours, the 250 trees were successfully in place. The trees will be tagged for identification and monitored as they grow.

The area selected for the Arbor Day tree planting event was once a thriving wetland. However, due to the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes and the recent droughts which left the Lake Okeechobee region parched, the existing pond apple trees were wiped out.  ...more