Brooker Creek Preserve Environmental Education Center is a classroom as big as all outdoors, with lessons by creatures great and small.
By THERESA BLACKWELL
Published June 16, 2004
[Times photos: Douglas R. Clifford]
Dragonflies, such as this one on a vine, are among the hundreds of species within the 8,500 acres of woods and swamps waiting for visitors to observe in their natural environment.
[Times photos: Douglas R. Clifford]
The subtleties of the many unassuming plants and animals in the Brooker Creek Preserve Environmental Education Center are explained by interpretive naturalist Kelly Victory, center, using an array of natural artifacts suspended in polyester resin panels at Pinellas County's new outdoor classroom, which opens Saturday.
[Times photos: Douglas R. Clifford]
Balancing on a temporary walkway over Brooker Creek, Susan Awbrey of Tampa leads a group of educators and teachers in fording the stream to get a closeup of some of the details in the preserve.
EAST LAKE - After more than two years of construction and $10-million, Pinellas County officials will open the county's biggest outdoor nature classroom on Saturday.
With its yellow Cracker-style buildings and meandering boardwalks, the new Brooker Creek Preserve Environmental Education Center is designed to show off the 8,500-acre preserve's unspoiled woods and swamps.
"It's going to allow the public to have access to the preserve and allow them to learn more about how natural systems work and why it's important to have a preserve," said Cathie Foster of Tarpon Springs, the chair of the private, nonprofit support group, Friends of Brooker Creek Preserve.
Opening ceremonies are open to the public and will start at 9 a.m. Saturday. This week, however, 28 teachers from 13 schools in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties got an advance look at the facility.
"We invited all of the schools that fall within the Brooker Creek watershed to participate," said Raina O'Neill, Southwest Florida Water Management District youth education coordinator. "Our hope is that they will take everything they learn here at the institute back in watershed education throughout the school year."
On Monday, the teachers turned in at the center's entrance off Keystone Road and drove down the half-mile drive, which has a 15-mph speed limit to protect the wildlife. After parking, they entered the first kiosk and walked the winding boardwalk through a wet hammock where frogs called out and egrets fished with sharp bills.
The teachers met in all three of the center's buildings: The auditorium and multipurpose building, the classroom building and the exhibit and office building.
Hoffman Architects of Tarpon Springs designed the center and Creative Contractors of Clearwater built it at a cost of $7.7-million.
The auditorium-multipurpose building has 8,000 square feet, an auditorium that seats 200, space for art exhibits as well as dining. The classrooms have about 4,300 square feet with walls of windows and a screened classroom, as well as outdoor showers for hikers.
Nearly a quarter of the money spent on the project went into a series of high-tech exhibits designed to teach visitors about the diverse wildlife of the preserve, the history of the area and the way ecosystems interact.
Academy Studios of Novato, Calif., designed and built the exhibits and Boston Productions of Norwood, Mass., produced and installed the audiovisuals at a cost of $2.5-million. The exhibits-office building has 6,000 square feet of exhibits and a gift shop, as well as more than 7,000 square feet of offices.
Funds for the project came from the Penny for Pinellas sales tax, county utilities department, Southwest Florida Water Management District and the Pinellas County Environmental Foundation. The Friends of Brooker Creek Preserve are raising funds for exhibits and amenities to be added later.
"I'm ecstatic," education center manager Jim McGinity said. "It's a beautiful facility and it's a great resource for the entire region to come and learn more about our environment."
On Monday, the visiting teachers briefly stopped by the exhibits, where workers were completing the installation. Just inside the exhibits building, they saw a display of natural objects - leaves, seeds and feathers encased in resin, showing the beauty of small things seen up close.
The first exhibit room has ecosystem and animal exhibits. Most are interactive. For example, on Saturday, you can crawl through an enlarged gopher tortoise burrow.
The exhibits room leads into an object theater with artifacts from the Boyd family, which once owned much of the preserve. A show with projected images will bring the audience into a log cabin and show changes in the surrounding landscape. The last exhibit area will show man's effect on the environment and suggest ways to live in closer harmony with nature.
After seeing the exhibits building, the teachers left on a hike where Kelly Victory, the center's interpretive naturalist, showed them the effects of water, fire and man on the environment at Brooker Creek.
Since the new trails are all on the other side of Brooker Creek from the center and two bridges that will eventually span Brooker Creek won't be ready until this fall, the trails will not be open to the public at first. But the teachers got a preview for the price of fording the creek on a few planks.
"I think the men should give piggy-back rides," said Janie Schulz, a teacher at Cypress Woods Elementary School in East Lake. "We could make it a math problem: How many trips would it take . . ."
Once class members crossed over Channel A, the main branch of Brooker Creek, they waited briefly next to the tannin-colored water covered with duckweed. Victory encouraged them to notice changes in the landscape caused by nature or by man as they walked.
They stooped to see an assassin bug, ducked to leave a spider's work intact and stopped at a gopher tortoise's burrow. They noted how fire had scarred the bark of slash pines. They stopped to soak in the natural landscape. Oaks grew on one side, with sand and wire grass between pines, saw palmettos and wild lilies on the other side.
"I remember when a lot of Pinellas County looked like this," said Rita Spillers, a teacher at Cypress Woods Elementary School, before the group moved on.
"Preserving this wildest place is a good man-made change," said Victory. "I encourage you to go back into your lives and think about the footprints you want to leave on the land."
- Times photographer Douglas R. Clifford contributed to this report.
