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In late September to mid-October, the Town of Cutler Bay will begin a massive project called the Coastal Ridge Preserve project, beginning with the removal of invasive trees at the 8.5-a icre property.
Its the first step in the master plan to create a park that will include trails, educational pavilions, and a potential bat house in collaboration with Zoo Miami. The project is funded through a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) grant and a town match, with additional county support for restoration provided by Miami-Dade Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins.
Town manager Rafael Casals spoke about it during the Open Mic Night on Aug. 26.
“We have a lot of cleanup efforts so besides meeting with the community we had Congresswoman [María Elvira] Salazar looking at the plans as well,” Casals said. “We’re trying to seek any type of federal funding as well.
“Right now, I can tell you that we just approved a vendor to remove all the invasive trees.
It’s going to be like almost every single tree. That’s something that we approved during the council meeting about a couple months ago. We researched the contract. The contractor does this for a living and in fact one of the biggest customers is Miami-Dade County.”
Casals said that the town will be working with the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM), and that Mayor Tim Meerbott will be recording an informational video about the project soon. Signs will be going up in the area.
Adrian Delesdernier, a kindergarten teacher at Dr. Edward L. Whigham Elementary School who is interested in environmental issues, is excited about it.
“I’ve been following this since the campaign ‘Preserve the Preserve – Make it a Park’,” Delesdernier said. “I’m thrilled that the Town of Cutler Bay has been in step with the needs of the community and their dedication to an environmental vision, which has been years in the making.
“Removing the invasive trees is a big step forward that will help continue the efforts of the Pine Rockland restoration that has been happening for years and will help stop the spread of these invasives further into the property,” Delesdernier continued.
“As a local educator, I love the idea that this new park space will, in essence, be dedicated to helping educate the public about the history of South Florida’s unique and endangered habitats as well as promote conservation stewardship for the future.”
She also said that Eduardo Verona has been the voice of the community and the lead in restoration efforts.
“I’m the one that organized all the meetings with the community to get the town to buy that,” Varona said. “In 2005, a group of us got together to lobby the South Florida Water management district to buy not just the uplands, the eight and a half acres, but also the 130 acres of coastal wetlands and with the community behind us we finally convinced them to buy the project plans for Everglades restoration.
“However, what happened was the district decided not to buy the eight and a half acres of uplands which was part of the original study area for the entire project because, since the project really was about delivering water to the coastal wetlands, they only bought the wetlands because they were paying so much money for that land.”
Varona wasn’t content with letting it end there and having developments end up on that land. In 2014, he decided to lobby the town officials to do the best they could.
“You know at first they wanted to do a mixed-use development with a hotel and big box stores,” Varona said. “That got denied. Then they wanted to do houses — McMansions — and then finally that got deniedm and that’s when the town negotiated with the county to buy the land.”
He’s pleased with how it all worked out.
“I feel great about it in that these lands were once pine rocklands and coastal hammock. Those are traditionally very important ecological lands because it is where the uplands meet the wetlands. In ecology that’s called the ecotone and those ecotones are extremely important from an ecological perspective,” Varona continued. “After they stopped farming it just got completely covered in invasive species, all the bad invasive species we have like Brazilian Pepper and a few others.”
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