The siren call of sun, surf and sand has drawn visitors for thousands of years to the barrier islands off the southwestern coast of Florida.

Four of those islands wedged between the Gulf of Mexico and Estero Bay provide an oasis reminiscent of old Florida.

This area today is a wildlife preserve, a recreational facility and a place of respite between the bustling tourist spots of Bonita Springs and Fort Myers Beach.

But this little slice of old Florida paradise almost went the way of a lot of other properties up and down the coast into commercial development.

Instead, concerned citizens fought to preserve this pristine landscape and turn it into one of the more beloved state parks in Florida.

This is the lure of lovers key.

To understand the allure of Lovers Key, it's important to understand its environment and its importance to the overall ecosystem in southwest Florida.

So Lovers' Key State Park is a beautiful gem in the state of Florida.

We have just under sixteen hundred acres of both uplands and estuary.

And then, of course, we have a beautiful two miles of gulf beach.

And then we have a half mile of beach that runs along Big Carlos Pass.

The park is a system of four barrier islands set off from the mainland of Florida, Lovers' key, Inner Key, Long Key and Black Island.

And as barrier islands, they serve a very important purpose.

The barrier islands are landmasses that are front of the mainland, and they are generally detached from the mainland.

And they are first piece of land that protects the mainland from storms coming from the ocean.

And that's why they are called barrier barrier islands.

Well, barrier islands are and very natural system.

They're very dynamic.

They shift with every wave.

Sometimes imperceptibly on a daily basis and sometimes very dramatically with the storm impact.

And they're they're meant to be a natural moving system so that they can absorb the wave impact and distribute that energy so it doesn't cause damage to the mainland.

This natural shifting of the island makes them perfect as that first line of defense for the state barrier.

Barrier islands are very important in Florida for our nesting shorebirds and our nesting sea turtles.

A rich diversity of wildlife can be found in several habitat throughout the state park.

So on Lovers Key, you're going to find three different habitats.

One would be the intertidal zone or a marine zone.

So that's going to be right at the water's edge.

Once you go up into the beach, you're going to get our dune ecosystem and the sand dunes.

Their main purpose is to protect against storm surge and overwash.

That's also where our sea turtles nest.

And then behind the dunes, which here at Lovers Key is really special is we have a coastal strand habitat.

The root systems of the coastal strand provide structure to stabilize the barrier islands and coastal strands, as you can imagine.

That's where everybody wants to build their beach houses and condos and hotels.

So we're really lucky that Lovers Key State Park got preserved and we still have this habitat and Coastal strand habitat is pretty few and far between in Florida now.

So once you leave the Lovers Key most oceanfront island, you get into Inner Key, which is a mangrove island it has a little bit of upland.

And within that, you're going to mainly have the mangrove forests around the island.

Mangrove forests are incredibly important for juvenile fish and our wading birds because they're going to invest and grow.

they're young in those areas.

Moving past Lovers Key and Inner Key, you have Black Island and that's where still the island is going to be fringed by mangroves.

And we have our maritime hammock.

The maritime hammock is really important And that's where a lot of our gopher tortoises live.

It's where a lot of our alligator ponds are.

So that's really your land area of the park.

Just like the beaches protect, the front side of the island are aquatic preserve protects the backside of the island.

The aquatic preserve is dedicated to protecting our coastal and aquatic resources, such as mangroves and salt, marsh and oyster reefs.

So keeping these systems healthy and keeping the water quality clean helps to maintain protection of this island from the backside.

The aquatic preserve is important for a lot of the experiences that folks have on the barrier islands.

Those seagrass bed habitats, Those seagrass bed habitats, they bring in, sea turtles, they bring in manatees.

You get a glimpse of a manatee in the back water.

They're back there because The Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve is helping to protect those habitats.

And we're really lucky that we have Estero Bay.

It was the first aquatic preserve designated in the state of Florida.

So on the ocean side, Gulf side, you have Lovers Key State Park Then you have the Estero Bay, which is an estuarine, which means where freshwater and saltwater meet.

And then on the mainland side, most of that coastline is preserved as Estero Bay Preserve State Park.

And then all of the islands that are mangrove islands within the bay are actually also state parks.

And that's part of the Estero Bay Preserve State Park.

So this is a really unique area where the majority of the area has been preserved and protected.

Preserving the natural resources of this area from Estero Bay to the beaches of Lovers Key is essential for a variety of reasons, starting with the barrier islands.

They are extremely fragile.

High hazard areas.

That means you get more hurricanes, for example, Lovers Key here has an elevation of anywhere from two feet to no more than five feet.

So when you get a 100 year hurricane, it will be at least eight or 10 or 12 or 15 feet.

So the whole island can be underwater.

So they're not suitable for building development or houses on it.

Healthy beach and dune systems are invaluable to this state.

They're one of our more precious natural resources.

Not only do they provide critical habitat for threatened and endangered species they also help protect the state's economy.

You know, Florida is known for their beaches.

We are Florida's brand.

So it's critical for our tourism and economic development of this state to keep healthy and productive beach sand dune system.

Long before they became critical for tourism, the secluded barrier islands drew generations of people who saw an abundance of natural resources and perhaps an abundance of privacy.

So Lovers Key kind of got its name Lovers Key, because apparently a lot of locals came out by boat as couples and they were lovers.

So it's kind of known as the romantic island.

There's also a kind of lore that a pirate couple kind of lived out here on the beach and they were lovers.

So it's another reason why it got its name Lovers Key.

The first people to establish a permanent presence throughout southwest Florida were Calusa Indians or other indigenous tribes.

It's thought that they inhabited the area 12,000 years ago.

The Calusa, like us, would have been using islands in much the same ways we do today.

They were important to them recreationally, economically, and in that way, very similar.

But certainly there's a tie and a connection to the fisheries and to the environment of these areas, supporting all that is of our life from the barrier islands throughout Estero Bay.

The Calusa would have seen and perhaps avoided ships carrying European explorers who first took notice of the tribe in 1513 by the seventeen hundreds.

The Calusa population had dwindled, either taken into slavery by enemy tribes or by diseases brought by the Europeans, giving opportunity to others to enjoy the rich abundance.

In the 19th century, Cuban and Portuguese fishermen made their voyage north and built seasonal structures to reap a harvest of mackerel, mullet, grouper and more.

So between Calusa Spanish, possibly Pirates Cubans, Portuguese and eventually young lovers coming here for their trysts, a whole succession of people have been attracted to Lovers Key.

The ecology of Lovers Key remained unchanged until the mid 20th century, when a new generation of Americans headed to Florida's Gulf Coast after World War II up and down the coast from Tampa to Naples.

The landscape was quickly becoming transformed by urbanization and construction.

Back in the early sixties, there needed to be a causeway that connected the city of Bonita Springs to the town of Fort Myers Beach So an engineering firm, Carl Johnson Engineering, got the contract.

Carl Johnson had this dream.

So he was able to make the case to to do this causeway.

Well, from an environmental standpoint, it had a huge change on the bay.

You know, if some of us were very concerned about.

So Carl Johnson was out in the area a lot, building the causeway, and he fell in love with the islands.

So he went back to the Lee County commissioners and really advocated that this section of property, which is the southern half of our state park, really needed to be preserved, that it shouldn't be developed, because he knew as soon as the causeways were done that developers would want to come in and develop this beautiful area.

So he succeeded and Carl Johnson County Park opened up, and then the northern half of our property was up for sale and a developer ended up purchasing it and started to develop it to be basically themed resorts.

The dream behind Black Island Plantation Resort was from a fifth generation Floridian named Floyd Luckey.

for this project.

Luckey led a development coalition comprised of the state of Florida.

Lee County, private citizens and the family of Bob Graham, a future governor for Florida.

From the late 60s to the early 80s, the partners bulldozed vegetation, dredge canals and use the fill to build up Black Island's elevation for the new housing resort complex .

The idea was to build as approved.

Three hundred and thirty multifamily units along the waterways in different villages for different villages.

Floyd had some environmentalists and biologists sort of look at the entire property, developed lines where he thought would be the best to to dig the rivers, laid out the areas where the rivers were going to go and they just made all the rivers So every river that you see here is manmade.

He called a black island plantation because on the interim, once they developed the property and put in the rivers and everything then he planted the island with sea grapes and Dwarf Malay coconuts.

But in the 1980s, opposition to the development of the islands mirrored growing concerns throughout Florida about the destruction of coastal habitats.

See, what happened was these plans to develop the island took place at the very same time that there was a growing awareness that mangroves should not be bulldozed, that coastal islands like this one were increasingly being gobbled up for development.

And that not only was that denying the public access, but it was environmentally destructive.

A group of citizens decided to fight the development.

One of those happened to be Bill Hammond, who was a biology teacher in the Lee County Public Schools at the time, and he was tipped off about some aerial photographs.

One day I got a call from Larry Houston on Fort Myers Beach.

Larry was a photographer who did a lot of the postcards and posters of the beaches, and he was flying over the island.

And he called me and said, there's two big draglines out there.

Hammond took the photos to government officials in Tallahassee, including Governor Bob Graham, showed him the pictures of that situation.

And he was genuinely shocked.

I don't think he knew anything about it because Bob didn't have much to do with the development part of the Graham family.

His brother Bill, you know, did all that work.

And he looked at it and said, I'll get that stopped.

And while the dredging had been done, the development halted.

Governor Graham, whose family no longer had a financial interest in the development, also created a program called Save Our Coasts.

That prompted the state to purchase coastal properties for preservation.

So they started the Save Our Coast program and there was a priority system and there was only so much funds available to buy properties for the future, for the environment.

We worked on that for several months of not a year, to make sure that we met the criteria on that list, because he decided at that time we were going to sell to the state.

In 1983, Lovers Key and Black Island made it to the top of the list of properties to be protected by the Save Our Coast program.

Ironically, it was the developer, Floyd Luckey, who helped coordinate the sale to the state of Florida.

So now the state of Florida had state lands right adjacent to a county park.

So the county in the state got together, decided to merge the two properties and develop the Carl Johnson Lovers Key State Park which is what we have now.

It was a great time because we were expanding the process of more acquisitions.

More people were coming to Florida and there was more need to make sure those folks had access to our great beaches and our great lands When we received the park.

We had zero staff.

And then I had volunteers that were working to clear the Brazilian pepper.

Well, those were the early earliest members of what is now the Friends of Lovers Key.

At that time, there was really no way to get in to the beach here.

So so those members and I joined them a few times myself, would come here on the weekends and maybe one day during the week and actually literally blazed a trail through this area out to the beach.

And it was a dirty, grimy, heavy, filthy work to do.

And and they loved it.

And that's how the first first trail got out to the beach here in this park.

Then they said they were willing to staff the park on weekends so we could open the doors.

It was all through donation at that point.

And so we opened the doors as a result of those volunteers and the caring of these folks that are citizens wanting this park available to them and to the other folks here in southwest Florida.

Volunteers continue to play a vital role as stewards of the park, educating visitors on the importance of the two miles of Gulf beaches and dune habitat, leading tours to the four miles of hiking and biking trails and the three miles of canals by paddle, canoe and kayak In 2021, The Friends of Lovers Key celebrated the grand opening of the new Welcome and Discovery Center which offers interpretive programs.

Ranger led tours and opportunities for the public to develop a positive connection with the environment.

The center aspires to become a regional hub for environmental education and for advocacy Lovers Key is one of the most visited state parks in Florida.

Lovers Key is one of the most visited state parks in Florida.

As visitors come there, if they are able to go to the Discovery Center and learn more about the interdependence of the different habitats that are found there and about all the efforts that have been made over the years to preserve that area for the enjoyment of you who is standing here today.

And one of the best ways to teach people about the habitats that we have here is to get them out in the water to get them actually into those habitats where they are experiencing firsthand what the seagrass looks like, what the mudflats feel like, what kind of animals you're going to find in those habitats.

And it's always exciting to pull up a dipnet and see what's in there and see the the the the look of surprise and excitement on the faces of people when they realize that that there's something living in that shell that they just picked up.

So it's a lot of fun.

Educators from Lee County Schools and Florida Gulf Coast University participate in a variety of programs with Lovers Key to further explore the importance of preserving the environment and then extending that knowledge into the classroom.

One such program at FGCU Is called Wetland.

So Wetland is the watershed education teacher leadership academy.

And it is a new program that we've developed with the school district of Lee County.

And what is really unique and makes it special is that we're partnering teachers with FGCU researchers in the field.

We have been very fortunate to partner with Florida Gulf Coast University to get students and teachers equipped and out into the field to learn what types of ways they can look at the environment, what things they can measure and the data that they can collect.

And then the professors are able to interpret that for them and let them know what it is they're seeing.

They go out to the field.

They could be here today at this pond.

They're doing water quality sampling.

They're out there taking measurements, collecting data.

Teachers were able to go along with the researchers and find out how they learn about these bodies of water, whether they're actually looking for to know if they're healthy.

And then the best way is to manage the bodies of water.

41 centimeters.

This is really trying to give those teachers a broader skill set, not just teach a narrow lane about how to do hands on environmental education So in that case, it's absolutely critical to see science in practice to see, oh, my gosh, this is what it looks like for our students to better understand the context of what they're learning in the classroom.

It's really important for them to have the entire picture.

So if they go out into the field and experience themselves, what lives there and interconnection they have with their environment, they're more likely to retain the knowledge to be engaged and excited about it and then learn what they can do to help preserve it for the future.

So ultimately, now it's about building that connection between people and nature.

You are absolutely seeing the growth, the belief, the focus and the support for increased environmental education in southwest Florida.

While teachers and students are being trained on the scientific applications of environmental education, volunteers are using those applications throughout southwest Florida's ecosystem, for instance, as part of the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve.

They monitor water quality as far north as the Charlotte Harbor Estuary.

In a program called the Charlotte Harbor Estuary Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Network, or CHEVWQMN So the CHEVWQMN program is a monthly volunteer water quality monitoring program that takes a snapshot of water quality in the Greater Charlotte Harbor Estuary, all the way up from Lemon Bay down here to Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve.

So there are 46 sites located throughout three different counties, six different aquatic preserves And each of those sites is manned by volunteers.

Those volunteers collect water samples and field data at the same time every month, including at the boat ramp at Lovers Key.

So they get they get data on parameters such as dissolved oxygen, salinity, temperature, clarity, and then they also take grab samples.

And all of that data is loaded into the state's water quality database and can be utilized to help assess the impaired waters of the state.

Seagrass beds, oyster beds and colonial wading bird rookeries are also monitored by the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve.

Because these habitats are critical to the overall health of southwest Florida.

I mean, it really does show the connection between the importance of preservation of uplands as well as the water submerged lands.

They there is a connection between the two.

You have to take a holistic approach.

So if you are impacting or affecting one, you're going to have an impact on the other.

The health of the water quality in the bay affects the barrier islands, affects the uplands.

But you got to protect those areas for now and future generations in order to make sure that folks have this place to come to enjoy those resources in a safe and healthy way.

So this is a really unique area where the majority of the area has been preserved and protected, which is an amazing story of how communities can come together and preserve lands, provide important habitats for animals to thrive, and allow all of our visitors and future generations to be able to come enjoy the natural Florida.

The original developer, Floyd Luckey, who was going to turn this into a theme park with thousands of condos, he sold his property to the state and he dedicated himself to stewardship and protection.

Floyd actually was one of the instigators of Friends of Lovers Key the FOLKS deal.

He was one of the first signers on.

And if you look in the records, he was actually one of the incorporated officers.

It was important to him that when the state bought the property, that it be developed so that people could use it.

So had this not been dredged and filled, noticed by alarmed environmentalists and fought over for years as to what to do with it, we wouldn't be able to enjoy it in its present state.

And I think it's also a great lesson that when, you know, people think, oh, what can the public do about something?

It shows the importance of public stewardship and being engaged with your your local habitats, your local land preservation, and what can be done when folks get together and make that effort to preserve something for future generations There's a Buddhist saying you can see the world through just one grain of sand, and here on the shores it Lovers Key State Park, that grain of sand is the story of how this park almost didn't come to be.

And in fact, was preserved by the actions and conscientious choices made by some concerned citizens to keep this as close as possible in its natural state.

Support for the Lure of Lovers Key is provided in part by the Bay Water Boat Club with a fleet of over 60 boats.

The family owned a Bay Water Boat Club is dedicated to providing recreational boating opportunities on the waters of Estero Bay.

For more information, visit B W Boat Club dot com.