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Smith Lake Preserve ~ From Acquisition to Restoration |
| Looking ahead to our 25th Anniversary Celebration on November 9 (registration is now open for this FREE, family-friendly event!) we thought it was time to highlight our flagship property, Smith Lake Preserve. The 487-acre property is located in Clay County and falls within the Ocala to Osceola Wildlife Corridor (O2O), a 1.6-million-acre network of public and private lands that connects the Ocala and Osceola National Forests, a critical link within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Smith Lake was acquired through a joint venture with the Army Compatible Use Buffer Program (ACUB) in late 2019 and while we took ownership of the property in 2019, it was not until April 2022 that we could fully access the property and make it home for the Stewardship Department.
Smith Lake Preserve is home to a stunning array of natural ecosystems, including beautiful sandhills, scrub, and wet prairie. This combination gives Smith Lake Preserve a wonderful array of wildlife diversity, and there is something new to see almost every day. A primary focus for our land management efforts has been restoring the sandhill habitat at Smith Lake Preserve, known for its majestic longleaf pine, turkey oaks, and wiregrass. The gopher tortoise, southern fox squirrel, white-tail deer, and eastern indigo snake are just a few animals that call this ecosystem home. A couple hundred years ago the southeastern United States was primarily made up of sandhill pine habitat. Industry and development have endangered this ecosystem, and thus, the longleaf pine. Due to its slow growth (some longleaf pines grow up to five hundred years), it is disappearing from our landscape on lands not in conservation. Through management techniques such as prescribed fire and replanting, we hope to provide viable habitat for the species that depend on it to thrive.
All around the preserve a visitor can see a project. Another priority project was removing cross-fencing from previous pasture use that was causing habitat fragmentation to the wildlife. This cross-fencing is still prevalent down by the Smith Lake Preserve edge in the wet prairie. By removing this barrier, all species will be able to move freely around without the hazard of making their way over, under, or through the fences.
In November 2023 NFLT was excited to announce a partnership with the Florida Trail to include a two-mile section of trail that will run through the Smith Lake Preserve for hikers to enjoy. A part of the 1,500-mile Florida National Scenic Trail, the previous path of the trail ran along a road to the north of the preserve, a path not pleasing in terms of scenery, but also not always safe for hikers. The new trail takes hikers through the preserve, providing serenity and respite and carefully limits the visual impact of neighbors and development. Year-round, hikers can experience all that makes this Smith Lake Preserve unique, like seeing a fetterbush in the scrub blooming in the spring or a blazing star in its lavender glory dotting the landscape under the longleaf pines in the fall. The beauty is in the details as much as it is in the landscape.
In late spring 2024 NFLT received a grant to complete much needed renovations on the barn and the surrounding infrastructure at Smith Lake. This anonymous gift is enabling our stewardship department to improve the facilities at their headquarters, plus improve the roads surrounding the property, and create a greenhouse that will support the restoration and management of NFLT’s nature preserves. As NFLT President and CEO, Allison DeFoor, said about the award, it will be transformative for our land stewardship team and the work they do to restore and manage the 14,000 acres and counting that NFLT has in its portfolio.
The creation of the greenhouse will enable NFLT to grow approximately 20,0000 plugs of various native plant species like wiregrass, blazing star, lopsided Indian grass, and prairie dropseed grass. With this in-house resource for plugs, the stewardship team can restore the continuity of various plant species throughout the habitats on NFLT preserves, all of which are important for wildlife such as gopher tortoises and the eastern indigo snake. The ability to cultivate these plugs will supplement the prescribed fire program used to manage the land, providing additional future cost savings for NFLT and allowing the organization to be more efficient in supporting the viability and growth of the ecosystems in its 26 preserves.
The improvements to the stewardship headquarters at Smith Lake Preserve will also help protect the essential equipment (including a brand new fire truck made possible by a grant from the Delores Barr Weaver Legacy Fund) that we use to execute our land management plans; equipment that makes it possible for us to forgo the use of outside contractors. NFLT can implement land management strategies using in-house resources to perform duties such as prescribed fire, exotic/invasive species removal, and repairing fences. The investment also adds value to the stewardship facility, supports the overall health of the stewardship operations, and provides long-term sustainability for both the facility and the organization as a whole. Protecting Smith Lake Preserve was a huge win for NFLT, though you could say we are even more excited about what the future holds for the habitat and wildlife that call it home.
Interested in reading more about Smith Lake Preserve and who calls it home? Click HERE to read an article from our Summer edition of Landscapes, the NFLT newsletter, about the animals that live on our preserves, including Smith Lake. If you have a fondness for gopher tortoises like we do you can click HERE to read about our work to make Smith Lake Preserve a gopher tortoise recipient site (part 2 of that series can also be found in the Summer 2024 Landscapes).
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