Mangrove Restoration Phase One Complete, Phase Two on the Way

The $2 million Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove Restoration Project, hailed as the largest mangrove restoration project in the history of Florida, is about to move into Phase Two. The restoration project is located on east San Marco Road, between Goodland Drive and the Stevens Landing condominiums. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.

"We’re restoring the creeks themselves,” said project manager Corey Anderson, restoration biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). "We’re about halfway done with that. We hired a contractor several months ago and they’ve completed Phase One, which was on the existing culvert side on the east. They cleared out debris, dead trees and things from about 2,000 feet of creek. They widened and deepened the creek channel that had filled in over the years. It just didn’t have flow. They used an aquatic excavator machine. It’s basically like your regular excavating machine, with the brontosaurus head that scoops dirt out. But they have one that is aquatic. The track wheels on it float. It’s a pretty nifty piece of equipment."

The restoration project targets two branches of Fruit Farm Creek, an eastern branch and a western branch. Both creek branches are on the south side of San Marco Road. 

"They both flow north past San Marco Road,” Anderson said, “then they would flow into Big Marco River."

The restoration project requires a great deal of intergovernmental cooperation with the DEP, Office of Resiliency and Coastal Protection, FWC, the City of Marco Island and Coastal Resources Group all lending their expertise. The funding for the project comes from NOAA.

"The funding is related to fishery disaster recovery following Hurricane Irma,” Anderson said. "Specifically, to rebuild fish habitat. Fruit Farm Creek is an excellent one because we know mangroves are fish habitat. We know there was a long-standing problem. And we had the solution, it was just such a big problem that it needed a big injection of funding. This one fit the bill really nicely. With Irma making landfall pretty much on Marco Island, it was a no-brainer that this is someplace we should be working to recover fish habitat and therefore continue the healthy fisheries in the area.”

According to Anderson, the problem with the mangroves started when San Marco Road was put in. The mangroves have been struggling to survive ever since.

"The mangroves are incredibly resilient,” Anderson said. "They deal with shifting soils and they deal with hurricanes and they’re able to bounce back. But this was a longtime stressor. They couldn’t get drained properly of all of the freshwater rainfall in the summer. And they weren’t getting tide in the winter. So, it was alternately drowning and choking them. And it took decades, but I know the Conservancy of Southwest Florida has been studying this for 30 years. And they were beginning to see signs of that in the 1990s. Then slowly the patch of dead trees has grown and grown as the problems just continued.

"Hurricanes exacerbate the existing problem. We had the existing problem that was slowly killing them by 1,000 cuts. Then you get that big wind and rain event, and if the tree is weak, it’s a lot easier for it to fall down. Or for it to just give up the ghost. We did see some expansion of the dead area after Irma. You can see that on the before and after maps. Hurricane Irma did make it worse. That was in our favor in the sense that it was easy to prove there is a link to Hurricane Irma. Because that is where our funding came from.”

The eastern branch of Fruit Farm Creek had one undersized culvert that was not functioning well. Crews contracted by the City of Marco Island will replace that culvert and add a second culvert. The new culverts are 60 inches and will double the water flow capacity. They will also install two culverts on the western branch.

"We’re getting ready to start on Phase 2 of the creek project,” Anderson said. "That’s on the western side, or western branch. That’s the larger area that’s more visible from the road. They’re going to do the same thing. Clear out dead trees and debris and excavate the creek where it used to be, for about 1,000 feet. That one will be more visible because it’s kind of parallel to San Marco Road. That big, round, dead area. That’s the area we’ll be working on. When they built San Marco Road, going on 80 years ago or more, they didn’t put any pipes under the road there. So, the west branch of Fruit Farm Creek hasn’t flowed for the longest time. And that’s why everything kind of filled in and you have that die off of mangroves. We’re clearing out the creek so we have better flow and we’re putting two big culvert pipes under the road where there were none before.”

The results won’t happen overnight, but with time Anderson is confident Marco Island will see their mangroves come back strong. They will not be planting mangroves to renourish the depleted mangrove forest.

“In fact, our plan is to let nature take its course,” Anderson said. "This is an idea that’s known as ecological mangrove restoration. And I think that term was coined by a man named Robin Lewis. He was the biggest proponent of the Fruit Farm Creek project. The idea is that if you have the right tidal conditions and the right soil elevations, mangrove propagules will find the spot and go gangbusters if you make the conditions right. We’re not planning to do any mangrove planting in the initial couple of years. We’re planning to see how the natural recruitment from seed fall is. And go from there. It’s basically you get the tidal flows right by opening up those culverts and you get the right land surface by excavating the creek in the surrounding area so water can flow at the right times and the right depth. It used to be productive for mangroves. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be productive for mangroves again. It will take several years for it to fully recolonize. Potentially decades.”

According to Anderson, you can expect to see growth within a couple of years.

"We anticipate that it should start to green up in a few years,” Anderson said. "You’ll get those little sprouts. Then you get the shrubby little ones in a few years. In five years, you’ll likely start to see shrubby trees and things. To get a full-grown tree, it takes many years.”

One doesn’t have to look far to see proof that the program will work. A mangrove die off west of the Stevens Landing Condominiums is a success story.

"There was a pilot program for Fruit Farm Creek by Stevens Landing,” Anderson said. "That is now eight years old. There are shrubby mangrove trees in there and they’re starting to grow up. That’s the same thing we’re expecting to happen on the south side of the road. It will take four to five years for them to become shrubby. For them to become small trees it will take at least a decade—and 25 years at least to become full blown trees. Mangroves in that area tend to top out at about 40 feet or so because of hurricanes. Every decade or so if you get a little tropical storm or something, it snaps off the twigs at the top and they don’t get much taller than that. They won’t necessarily be 40 feet tall in 25 years, it may take longer than that. It depends on the growing conditions and other things. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say that in 25 years you’ll have a whole new forest. There’s a lot of factors that affect that, but within several decades the forest should return.”

Anderson, while not directly involved with the Goodland Drive road construction project, says it provides a direct benefit to his project.

"That has a positive effect,” Anderson said, "because it should reduce the flooding over Goodland Drive, which is very bad for life, limb, and property. It should increase the flow underneath the road. That will be a positive benefit for the mangroves over there.”

While one might assume it’s just one big mangrove forest off of San Marco Road, it’s actually not.

"The entire area between Goodland and, say Stevens Landing and those other developments to your south,” Anderson said, "looks like one forest. But it flows in different directions. Closer to Goodland it flows toward Goodland. At Stevens Landing it flows north. Probably down south closer to Captain Horr’s Island, it flows south, I’m sure. Four or five inches of elevation in Florida changes the way water flows. You get a little bit of a rise or a hump and stuff goes in a different direction. In the grand scheme of things, both of those efforts are helping out. So, it all kind of drains away to the easiest path it can find. The work that they did on Goodland Drive will be good for the immediate area. And it’s right up next to the work we’re doing for Fruit Farm Creek and it will all make for a healthier mangrove forest in the future."