Not Your Typical “Spring Breakers”

As part of a growing trend across the nation, students from various universities are choosing “Alternative Spring Breaks” and volunteering for environmental causes.

Nine Ohio State University students traveled to Tampa Bay Aquatic Preserve to help staff restore the vegetative ecosystems of several dredged spoil islands. Students and staff removed and treated about a half-acre of Brazilian pepper trees, removed three Australian pines, planted native plants, mulched trails and collected about 15 bags of trash from nearby spoil islands. To fully experience the Tampa Bay area, students dined with preserve staff, camped overnight on a spoil island and paddled on a moonlight canoe trip through Frog Creek in the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve.

Alternative Spring Breakers from the University of Georgia helped staff at St. Joe Buffer Preserve complete several beneficial projects. Working together they removed old, falling-down cyclone fencing and cleaned along the bay’s shoreline. They also planted native groundcover vegetation to restore one of the nicest areas within the Preserve. The Friends of St. Joseph Bay Preserve sponsored dinners for the group and members of the Preserve staff and “Friends” organization prepared the meals. Each of the 15 volunteers became student members of “Friends”.

Students representing a volunteer organization from the University of Tennessee taking part in an Alternative Spring Break program helped staff at Guana-Tolomato-Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) initiate control efforts for the cactus moth, Cactoblastis cactorum. The cactus moth is a non-native species that attacks several native cactus species and has caused considerable damage to the ornamental cactus industry in the Southwestern United States.

Under the supervision of NERR staff, the hard-working students identified infested prickly pear plants on a portion of the reserve’s beach dunes, harvested the pods containing cactus moth larvae and destroyed them – the most effective means found of limiting the spread of the invasive moths.

In other areas, 25 high school students from the state of Washington are camping out on one of the Ten Thousand Islands in the Rookery Bay NERR while performing clean-up activities on the island.

It seems that Alternative Spring Breaks are catching on in Florida – and that’s a good thing for our environment and for our future.