Wildlife Viewing - In Your Own Backyard

In Your Backyard

More Mangroves

Mangrove forests look like impenetrable snarls to us, but they are refuges for young mullet, tarpon, snook, crabs and shellfish. A complex food chain begins on and beneath the mangroves. If you have mangroves on your property, try to maintain them for the benefits they have to estuary life, in stabilizing the shoreline and offering protection from storms.

A property owner may trim mangroves, if he or she owns less than 150 feet of mangroves along their shoreline, and the thickness landward to shoreline is 50' or less, and if the mangroves are not taller than 10 feet from the ground. They may not be reduced under six feet tall. Herbicides or other chemicals cannot be used for defoliating mangroves. Any other activities would require a professional mangrove trimmer or a permit. Contact your local Department of Environmental Protection office for details.

Mangroves are so important to wading birds that when freezes in 1983 and 1985 killed the mangroves in a pelican rookery near Port Orange, in Volusia County, pelicans abandoned the site for nesting. The environmental advisory board of Port Orange arranged for Ecoshores Inc., an ecological restoration firm, to transplant a couple thousand mangroves rescued from a road-building project. By 1997 the mangroves were a dense thicket and the pelicans, safe from predators, were nesting in the restored rookery.