site’s draft management plan.<\/a>\n\t<\/p>\nThe 11,4000-acre area that includes the project contains a mixture of ranches and the legacy of a failed Florida land-sales scheme.\n<\/p>\n
The site also contains two miles of shoreline on Crooked Lake, which is classified as an Outstanding Florida Water.\n<\/p>\n
The property was first acquired a decade ago, but management plans have been slow to come together because of a combination of staffing shortages and the fact that the property is jointly owned by Polk County, the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA holds a conservation easement on a large section of the property.\n<\/p>\n
The only section open to the public is Crooked Lake Wildlife Environmental Area, which is accessed from U.S. 98. It was created to be a gopher tortoise mitigation site and contains an extensive network of hiking trails that are good for nature observation.\n<\/p>\n
The only improvement planned for the property is a small parking area on an upland portion of the property.\n<\/p>\n
Much of the property is seasonally flooded. That includes some of the areas of the hiking trail depicted above.\n<\/p>\n
There is scrub habitat on the property that contains a good variety of endangered plant species, but it will be accessible only to groups by special arrangement.\n<\/p>\n
The site also contains an archeological site of Midland, an abandoned town that existed in the late 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries..\n<\/p>\nThe long-term plan is to restore more of the site’s wetlands and to reduce direct discharges to Crooked Lake through canals that were dug for agricultural drainage.\n<\/p>\n
A wildlife passage area that was constructed for cattle movement will remain in place.\n<\/p>\n
The site contains diverse wildlife including a variety of resident and migratory songbirds, sandhill cranes, wild turkey, Florida scrub-jays and great horned owls. The area near the lake contains striking patches of wildflowers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Crooked Lake West may be closer to getting its first public visitors by the end of this year. Polk County Environmental Lands staffers held a public meeting recently on the site’s draft management plan. The 11,4000-acre area that includes the project contains a mixture of ranches and the legacy of a failed Florida land-sales […]<\/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-572","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\/572","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=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"\/](\"http:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/conservation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/061918_1225_CrookedLake1.jpg\")
\n\t<\/p>\n