Blog # 3: Corkscrew Sancturary

The trip to the Corkscrew sanctuary was very informative and fun to see all of the wildlife which surround the sanctuary. They have many reptiles as shown above a water snake and a 9ft female Alligator. There are also numerous birds such as Hawks, Egrets, and much more. The sanctuary has three distinct ecosystems, the wet lands, pine uplands, and a cypress dome. The pine uplands the trees are good usages for building materials. In the cypress dome there are pond cypress and bold cypress which live submerged in the swamp waters providing nutrients and oxygen to the water. The wet lands in the dry season provide good shelter and hiding spots for Deer and other animals. The sanctuary also has a living machine where they use plants to turn human waste into purified water which is then used for sprinklers and as toilet water for flushing. Conservation is the act of preserving something or protecting, or restoring the natural environment. Stewardship is the ethic that embodies responsible planning and management of resources. The role of private non-profit in these two endevors are that they have to conserve the environment while ensuring stewardship because they need to plan how and what they are going to do to conserve that area. Like-minded people can affect change by implementing ideas on how to conserve environments or how to destory them. They can be very influential in the decisions about conservation. Civic engagement factors into this by the sanctuary is trying to promote the importance of conservation and the ecosystems which will be destroyed if they are not protected. The motivation to preserve this sanctuary was due to all of the plume feathers being harvested and the birds were disappearing, so one soldier protected the birds from hunters and that is how the sanctuary was developed. The proper role of the government should be to help preserve ecosystems like these however, whether they do show their support is debatable. This sanctuary should not just be bulldozed and used for condos because there are so many ecosystems which thrive there and if they did that then all of those animals who live there would be pushed out of their environment and would migrate somewhere else causing chaos.