Lobby Day 2026- Sierra Club volunteers from all over the state showed up for Lobby Day in Tallahassee
Linda Smithe, Executive Committee Chair
Our Lobby Day and your advocacy did the trick. THANK YOU for every call you made, email you sent, post you shared, and minute you dedicated yourself to standing up for Florida’s environment this session. Here's what you helped accomplish:
Our Wins:
· SB 302 / HB 1035 – Nature-Based Coastal Resiliency: This was the first of 2 bills Governor Desantis signed into law. It is already being used to stop a proposed cruise ship port near Tampa Bay. The area nearby, Rattlesnake Key, is now being considered to be turned into a state park! This bill also advocates for “nature-based’ coastal resiliency, such as living sea walls, planting of mangroves and sea grasses.
This is a meaningful step forward in advancing nature-based solutions that protect Florida’s coastlines while strengthening community resilience.
· SB 484 / HB 1007 – Data Centers: An important first step toward protecting communities and consumers from the impacts of massive data center development. While last-minute amendments weakened parts of the bill, specifically water use and transparency, it establishes a foundation we can build on in the fight ahead.
· SB 546 / HB 441 – Conservation Lands: A bipartisan, forward-thinking bill that creates long-overdue oversight and transparency for conservation land swaps. Can’t wait to see how this pans out at local commission meetings
· SB 354 / HB 299 – Blue Ribbon Projects: A sweeping giveaway to the largest landowners in the state – and together, WE STOPPED IT!!!
· SB 1658 / HB 1421 – Cattle Grazing on State Lands: Although it passed the House, we stopped this proposal in the Senate and protected Florida’s state lands from expanded cattle grazing.
April is the height of our environmental season. Think Spring Break for Environmentalists. There are more tabling, outings, and meetings in April than any other month. Check out all our wonderful events
Here’s a simple answer: Earth Month is April, culminating in Earth Day on April 22, to note the first one, April 22, 1970. Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat, conceived the Earth Day idea as a “national teach-in on the environment” after witnessing the devastation of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969.
See below for information about some of the several upcoming events in our area.
NOTE: All of the events below are VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU! All you need to help us at our community outreach events is your friendly smile and a couple of hours. Reach out to the contact person noted in each event description below or just show up and ask, what can I do to help?
Earth Day at John D. MacArthur Beach State Park
When: Sunday, April 19 from 11 AM to 6 PM
Where: John D. MacArthur Beach State Park Nature Center, 10900 Jack Nicklaus Drive, North Palm Beach
The Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group in collaboration with the Palm Beach County Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society present:
An Afternoon at the Beach with Craig Huegel:
wildlife biologist, ecological consultant, author, and educator
We will gather at the Amphitheater for a pleasant day full of music, conversation, exploration, affirmation and motivation!
Enjoy CONVERSATION with fellow eco-conscious Floridians. STORIES shared by noted ecologist Craig Huegel, and MUSIC by our favorite duo, Angelina Zitelli and Sebastien Goodman.
SCHEDULE
11 am - 2 pm. Tabling event and live music. (If you can donate an hour helping at our display table contact Linda Smithe )
12 pm - 2 pm. Meet and Greet and Book Signing with Craig Huegel. Craig has published four books with University of Florida Press. If you’d like to order any for him to sign, go HERE
2 pm - 3 pm. A guided nature walk with Craig Huegel through the Mac Beach Hammock. Enjoy the shade of the tree canopy and the breeze off the ocean as Craig leads an exploration of the flora and fauna protected in this special space. Must REGISTER beforehand. Limited to the first 20 people from Loxahatchee Group and Native Plant Society who REGISTER
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm. Craig shares his Conservation Story - how he got started and the mile-markers along the way.
SEE YOU THERE!!
Earth Day at Okeeheelee Park
When: Saturday, April 18
Where: Okeeheelee Park, 7715 Forest Hill Blvd, West Palm Beach
Celebrate Earth Day at this FREE, special event with various activities scheduled throughout the day at Okeeheelee Park. Activities will promote awareness of environmental protection and earth conservation. Consider donating a couple hours to join other volunteers at our display table. No experience necessary. ContactGlenn Lauferto volunteer.
Celebrate Earth Day with us at the Palm Beach Gardens campus amphitheater. Expect fun activities, live music, free food and more! Yes, we said free food!
This is also a volunteer opportunity for you. Consider donating a couple hours to join other volunteers at our display table. No experience necessary. Contact Glenn Laufer to volunteer.
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival celebrates the beauty and wonder of our natural world and inspires audiences everywhere to take action to protect it. The Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum is proud to join communities around the globe to increase a groundswell of environmental awareness and support through this festival and to celebrate our History Shaped by Nature!
But if you can spare some time to help us at our display table you can attend for free! SimplycontactMaria Pizanao-Balatovis to volunteer.
Put yourself in this picture,
Earth Day and every day
Shown are volunteers Glenn Laufer, Maria Pizano-Balatovis and Gail Ladd at the Sierra Club table at a recent NatureFest event.
Please consider helping us at one of our upcoming displays.
April General Meeting: Join us in the world where plants and animals meet
Craig Huegel, well-known author, ecologist, and educator with 34 years in designing sustainable landscapes for wildlife
Program: The Nature of Plants
When: Monday April 20, Light Refreshments and Live Music at 6:30 p.m, Meeting and Program from 7:00 — 8:30 p.m.
Where: UF/IFAS Mounts Botanical Garden Auditorium, 531 N Military Trail, West Palm Beach 33415
The Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group and the Palm Beach County Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society have collaborated to bring noted Florida ecologist Craig Huegel to town for a special program on The Nature of Plants. This will NOT be your typical talk on plants.
Craig is known for his entertaining speaking style and dynamic delivery. He has received numerous state and regional awards from public agencies and private conservation groups for his environmental education, restoration and preservation work.
The view that plants are immobile, non-sentient beings (and certainly far less interesting than animals), has been overturned in recent years by a large body of research revealing that plants are far from passive beings. Ground-breaking discoveries reveal that plants use complex coping strategies as they interact with the environment. Craig Huegel’s talk focuses on the striking similarities of plants and animals.
Craig’s specialty area is the plant-animal interaction. He is well known as a state expert in the design of wildlife-attracting landscapes. Craig grows and introduces uncommonly grown wildflowers to the trade and maintains active, in-depth blogs on native Florida wildflowers and his experience in converting typical residential landscapes to native dominant systems. Craig is the author of multiple books. He lectures widely across the state of Florida on the use of native plants in ecologically beneficial, sustainable landscapes.
Sunday April 5, 10 a.m, Paddle at Okeeheelee Park South in West Palm Beach
This is a leisurely, two-hour paddle on the water trail at Okeeheelee Park South. The park is at 7715 Forest Hill Blvd, West Palm Beach. Go south from Forest Hill, NOT NORTH. Allow yourself time to launch at 10 please. Trip Leader: Ron Haines For information and registration:
Sunday April 12, 10 a.m, Paddle John Prince Park in Lake Worth
This is a leisurely two-hour paddle in the backwaters of an urban park in central Palm Beach County. Please arrive in time for launch at 10 am. Use the Congress Avenue entrance to John Prince Park, 4759 South Congress Ave, Lake Worth. Trip Leader: Ron Haines For information and registration
Sunday April 19, 10 a.m, Paddle at Okeeheelee Park South in West Palm Beach
This is a leisurely, two-hour paddle on the water trail at Okeeheelee Park South. The park is at 7715 Forest Hill Blvd, West Palm Beach. Go south from Forest Hill, NOT NORTH. Allow yourself time to launch at 10 please. Trip Leader: Ron Haines For information and registration
Friday, April 24 to Sunday, April 26, Primitive Camping in the Big Cypress National Preserve Bear Island Campground. This campground is a primitive campground only accessible down a 20-mile secondary gravel road. Campsites have gravel or grass pads. It offers vault toilets, picnic tables, shared food storage, and fire rings. There is no water available. Make sure to bring PLENTY of fresh water! Trip Leader: Jordan Holaday, 732-912-1800. For information and registration
NAME BADGES FOR GROUP EVENTS
Say good-bye to stick-on name tags that you fill out for each event and then throw away. Order an official Loxahatchee Group name badge today!
Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group is making magnetic metal name badges available to its members. Above is a sample of the badge. It is 1 by 3 inches with an official Sierra Club logo on the left and our group name centered above your name.
Use this link to fill out an order form. Where it says name, put the name that you want on your name badge. You will receive notification that your order has been received and instructions on where to send a check for $15 payable to Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group.
After your check is received, your name badge order will be placed. You will be notified when it comes in. Process might take 2 weeks.
HARD BUT SATISFYING WORK
Outings Leader Lisa Hanley holds a specimen of fresh gopher tortoise scat. A healthy tortoise population is the reason we do what we do.
It’s a wrap, folks. We’re done with Galaxy Sand Pine Preserve Service Outings until November.
Our winter/spring season used to last beyond April but, well, you know, climate change. It’s getting too hot to safely and comfortably do the work we do. The Loxahatchee Group is committed to six clean ups per year and are on track to meet that goal – four down, two to go.
On its last outing, our group spent hours pushing through oak thickets and saw palmetto clumps smothered in love vine, grape vine and worst of all, smilax – a very thorny vine. We hacked and pulled and ripped out the overgrowth, while the overgrowth hacked back.
What in the world are the rewards for this sometimes seemingly endless work?
Good question. For the botanizers among us, discovering and freeing lovely native plants from the mats of love vine is rewarding. For the animal lovers, opening up areas to improve foraging for the resident gopher tortoises is immensely satisfying.
Join us in November to help restore this little treasure and discover what you love about Florida’s scrub community.
LOXAHATCHEE GROUP ENERGY COMMITTEE
Richard Stowe and County Commissioner Marci Woodward (photo by Nicole Bilotta)
Professor Jeffrey Huber engages in a conversation with an attendee while former Loxahatchee Group Energy Committee Chair Mike Fitzpatrick and member Christine Hemphill look on (photo by Richard Stowe)
Richard Stowe, Jeffrey Huber and Dr. Christopher McVoy, Lake Worth Beach City Commissioner (Photo by Karym Salcedo)
by Richard Stowe, Energy Committee Chair
The Loxahatchee Group Energy Committee drew over three dozen attendees in its first in-person meeting of 2026 at the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach on March 12. Vice-Mayor Marci Woodward introduced Jeffrey Huber, an esteemed Florida architect and landscape architect, who is a principal at Brooks, Scarpa, Huber, and professor of architecture at Florida Atlantic University. Professor Huber shared ideas and images from his book, Salty Urbanism: A Design Manual. He concludes that due to exceedingly high percentages of impervious surfaces, South Florida cities are built to flood and will do so even more as the ocean warms over the next seventy years.
Save The Date: The Energy Committee’s next meeting is on Wednesday evening, May 6th, from 6:30 to 7:30pm at the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach at 411 Clematis Avenue, West Palm Beach. Our speaker is Dr. Natalia Soares Quinete, an associate professor in Chemistry & Biochemistry at Florida International University (FIU)’s Institute of Environment. A prolific researcher, Dr. Quinete has co-authored ninety research papers, many of them on PFAS, forever chemicals, and plasticizers and how they affect life in our oceans. Light refreshments will be provided.
Waste incineration proposals have become major issues in Florida counties in recent years, but burning trash is the least environmentally sound and most expensive option for localities to deal with garbage.
Incinerators emit more pollutants than coal plants or landfills. In search of other options to reduce waste, environmentalists call for source reduction, recycling and composting.
While supporters of incinerators cite the facilities’ use of high-level technology and that emissions are within healthful limits, environmentalists emphasize that incinerators still release carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, lead, mercury, dioxins, cadmium and particulate matter. Some toxic ash produced by incinerators is taken to landfills, creating possible environmental dangers.
In 2024, Palm Beach County commissioners directed the county Solid Waste Authority to move forward with planning for a $1.5 billion incinerator to replace one of two current incinerators.
In March, Miami-Dade County commissioners delayed choosing a site for an incinerator and approved compiling a report on a range of options for trash disposal, including zero-waste initiatives and landfilling. Commissioners plan to discuss options at a July 16 meeting.
Florida has seen more proposals for building or expanding waste incinerators in the country in recent years with consideration of plans in seven counties. Action has been taken on at least two plans.
More than 60 incinerators have closed in the U.S. in the past five years. Florida has nine of these waste incinerators and the largest capacity to burn municipal waste in the nation.
Sondra Levin, Boca Raton
Linda Smithe and Brian Ducharme Love vine in the air
Feb 25, Volunteers helped the Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management (ERM) remove 1,450 pounds of trash and vegetation debris from the Karen Marcus Ocean Park Preserve. Check out all those full bags of love vine! That is 1,020 pounds of love vine removed from the scrub. At the end of the trash removal segment of the cleanup event, the group removed another 430 pounds of debris.
Zara Brenner
Feb. 25, Karen Marcus Ocean Park Preserve –Volunteers helped the Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management remove 1,450 pounds of trash and vegetation debris from this preserve in Jupiter. Volunteers used rakes to reach love vine in the tops of trees and buckets to collect the trash.
On left is Sabrina Carle. In center, Randy Carle, Linda Smith, Brian Ducharme and Sabrina Carle are in the group photo. On the right are before (top) love vine removal and afterwards (below).
Feb 26, Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management staff and volunteers removed 3,350 pounds of trash, love vine and tree debris from the 98-acre Hypoluxo Scrub Natural Area. Love vine is a native plant that can get out of control – forming thick mats that smother scrub vegetation. The love vine covered gopher apple and scrub oaks. Gopher apple is an important food source for the protected gopher tortoise. Removing the love vine not only helps the gopher apple plants but also the gopher tortoises.
Linda Smithe and Brian Ducharme almost far left-
On the first day of Spring volunteers and Department staff spent several hours doing a little ‘spring cleaning’ at the 33-acre Lantana Scrub Natural Area. The group first cleaned along the perimeter fence line, removing lots of plastic and glass bottles, aluminum cans, styrofoam containers, food wrappers, clothing and cardboard. The second part of the volunteer project was removing love vine.
Brian Ducharme
Rosemary Scrub Natural Area volunteer event, volunteers really outdid themselves at this cleanup event. Removing and loading 2,480 pounds of vegetation debris and removed 130 pounds of trash during the March 18, 2026. Thanks to everyone for working so hard to keep this natural treasure clean and green.
Please contact Linda Smithe if you or a Sierra Club member you know does something to further our Mission: To explore and enjoy and protect the wild places of the earth. To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources. To educate and enlist humanity to protect and to restore the quality of the natural and human environment. And to use all lawful means to carry out those objectives.
BROWARD GENERAL MEETING
When: Thursday, April 2 at 6:30 PM
Where: Veterans Park, 7600 NW 50th St., Lauderhill, FL 33351
Trash & Recycling Beyond the Curb: We Have a Plan
Every minute in Broward County we are generating 20,000 pounds of waste! Most of it ends up in the landfill or waste-to-energy plant. With the waste-to-energy plant at capacity and the in-county landfill nearing capacity, we need to divert as much of our valuable waste as possible. Approximately 62% of the waste sent to the landfill or waste-to-energy plant could be diverted with the programs presented in the Master Plan. Disrupting the status quo is required to meet the needs of our growing population and economy.
Our speaker, Elisa Jones, is an administrator and outreach staff member at the Solid Waste Authority of Broward County and a proud Broward Sierra Group member.
APRIL 2ND ECO ACTION MINUTE: SUBMIT YOUR PLEDGE during the meeting to support the BSWA’s efforts! Let your city commissioners know you stand behind the work of the Authority.
APRIL 2ND IN-PERSON ACTIVITY: MINI ZERO WASTE SWAP!
Let’s work hard to keep nice things out of the landfill. Bring some items you have around your home or garage that are in good and usable condition that you no longer want for other members to take home and reuse. Examples: kitchen, office or art supplies, textiles, books, small appliances, electronics, garden supplies, etc. Any swap items leftover from the evening will be packed up and donated.
Bring: Please bring your refillable water container.
HOMEOWNER WEBINAR SERIES: Florida-Friendly Landscaping Program
This is a series of science-based informational programs from University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences experts to help your Florida landscape thrive while caring for the environment
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About Turtle Tracks
Turtle Tracks is the monthly newsletter of the Sierra Club Florida Loxahatchee Group. It contains environmental news and activities of interest to Sierra Club members and supporters in Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee counties. Contributions from readers are welcomed. Please review our submission guidelines.
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