{"id":3012,"date":"2025-09-28T11:07:45","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T15:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=3012"},"modified":"2025-09-28T11:07:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T15:07:46","slug":"se7en-wetlands-education-center-advancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=3012","title":{"rendered":"Se7en Wetlands Education Center Advancing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/se7enwet.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1003\" height=\"468\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/se7enwet.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3015\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/se7enwet.jpg 1003w, https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/se7enwet-300x140.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/se7enwet-768x358.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1003px) 100vw, 1003px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The long-sought environmental education center at Lakeland&#8217;s Se7en Wetlands near Mulberry appears to be coming closer to reality.<br>Polk County&#8217;s Development Review Committee is scheduled to discuss plans for a 2,200-square-foot facility at its Oct. 2 meeting.<br>The center will be located near the entrance from Polk County&#8217;s Loyce E. Harpe Park and will have only pedestrian access.<br>The park is open to the public daily for hiking and nature observation. There is no admission charge. <br>This year&#8217;s Lakeland budget contains $2.1 million for the project.<br>The park, which opened in 2018, contains 8.5 miles of trails that loop around a network of treatment wetlands that are used to remove nutrients from water discharged from the city&#8217;s sewer system before the water reaches the North Prong of the Alafia River.<br>The land was mined for phosphate in the 1920s and acquired by the city in 1985.<br>The treatment wetlands are home to diverse wildlife including wading birds, shorebirds, otters and dragonflies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"795\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-1024x795.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3016\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-1024x795.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-300x233.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-768x596.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-1536x1192.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/otter-2048x1589.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The long-sought environmental education center at Lakeland&#8217;s Se7en Wetlands near Mulberry appears to be coming closer to reality.Polk County&#8217;s Development Review Committee is scheduled to discuss plans for a 2,200-square-foot facility at its Oct. 2 meeting.The center will be located near the entrance from Polk County&#8217;s Loyce E. Harpe Park and will have only pedestrian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3017,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3012\/revisions\/3017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}