We hope you enjoy this issue of Turtle Tracks. If you have questions about it, please drop us an email.
THIS MONTH'S CHAIR CHAT: FROM THE TAKE A DEEP BREATH DEPARTMENT
Volunteers Cleaning a Park Image from a Sierra Club summer tool kit
Linda Smithe, Executive Committee Chair
Sometimes while serving as a volunteer for the Sierra Club, issues beyond your control come at you such as family, doctors, other obligations. Hopefully, they are all small, like having to postpone the planned letter writing activist meeting from September to October. Sometimes we don’t have the volunteers and rescheduling is the prudent way to go. Sometimes you are up late writing articles or proofing meeting minutes.
Sometimes, it’s just nice to enjoy a moment of calm. TedTalk , If Trees Could Speak with Elif Shafak, Oct 2020.
Thank you, Mary Cassell, for sharing this with me through our email Loxahatchee Forum. (If you would like to subscribe to the Forum, send an email request to Ron Haines.)
Let’s protect what we love and shape what comes next together.
Enjoy a relaxing evening socializing with the Loxahatchee Group at the Copperpoint Brewing Company in Boynton Beach, 151 Commerce Road, Boynton Beach, FL 33426
Gather with fellow Sierra Club members. Swap stories, play a little trivia, and look ahead at the coming season.
• Thirsty? Copperpoint Brewing Company is an award-winning brewery, offering a variety of beers, wines, seltzers, ciders, and nonalcoholic drinks.
• Hungry? Enjoy selections from Gimme Grillin”, a local gourmet food truck. Check out their menu.
• Not hungry? Enjoy a variety of light snacks. Your choice, your dime.
If you are in the area, we look forward to seeing you!
Join us for a leisurely, approximately 2-mile hike through Yamato Scrub’s scrub and flatwoods habitats. We’ll explore at an easy pace, stopping to observe seasonal plants, wildlife, and whatever catches our curiosity along the way. Sandy, uneven trails with limited shade. Bring water and sun protection. No restrooms.
Join us for a relaxed, approximately 2-mile interpretive walk at Wellington Environmental Preserve. We’ll follow flat paved trails and boardwalks through wetland and native plant habitat, with stops to look for birds, butterflies, pollinators, seasonal blooms, and other wildlife. Bring water, sun protection, and binoculars if you have them.
OCTOBER GENERAL MEETING: HELPING THE BURROWING OWL
Why is the Florida burrowing owl listed as Threatened? Let’s have a talk about what is being done and how you can help.
When: October 10 at 9:30 am.
Where: Green Cay Nature Center, 12800 Hagen Ranch Road, Boynton Beach
Our speaker will be Paul Kragh, Director of Burrowing Owl Conservation for Project Perch Inc. This not-for-profit group of volunteers is dedicated to the preservation of the tiny subterranean owl. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has recognized Paul as a registered agent for the Florida burrowing owl.
Please join us for this informative and fascinating program.
LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS WITH SMILING FACES. NO GRUMPY PEOPLE PLEASE!
LagoonFest 2026, October 31, 8:30 am to 2:00 pm, No Tricks Just Treats!
The 13th Annual LagoonFest is a celebration dedicated to honoring the Lake Worth Lagoon, one of the most scenic of Palm Beaches’ 20 miles of waterways and estuaries.
This is also an excellent volunteer opportunity for you! We will have a large booth at the event and we need your smiling faces to help us hand out Sierra Club literature. Give us a couple hours of your time and spend the rest of the day enjoying the event.
To volunteer, contact Glenn Laufer. No experience needed.
That’s all you need to do. Volunteer a small bit of your time and bring the entire family out to enjoy a day of fun with plenty of educational activities. Wildlife presentations and scientist-guided tours of the Lake Worth Lagoon will be available aboard the Hakuna Matata Catamaran and Aqua Adventures vessels.
• Kids Zone featuring face painting, lawn games, kids casting activities, a gopher tortoise burrow exhibit, artful crafts, and more.
• Happening right next door is the West Palm Beach GreenMarket, featuring delicious foods, locally grown seasonal fruits, vegetables, and artisan products.
Discover your connection to our natural treasure—the Lake Worth Lagoon!
Don’t forget, contact Glenn Laufer to volunteer for this event.
VENUES ANYONE?
Maria E. Pizano-Balatovis, Programs Committee
Your Programs Committee needs venues for our monthly programs!
Are you a member of a social club, civic/community-service club, fraternal organization, Homeowners Association, charitable organization, business, or any other group that has space to hold events, parties or meetings for at least 40 people? Are you able to contact them and check on the possibility of holding events for Sierra Club?
We need space with sufficient parking, hopefully gratis, where we can serve refreshments with availability any day of the week. If you are aware of any possible venue, please pass on the information to Maria with as many details as possible. I am creating a list of possible locations where we can hold our meetings. Currently we have very few venues that can host us.
I look forward to hearing from a lot of you throughout all our service area!
What to include in your email:
Name of Venue
Address/contact phone
Capacity
Free or Fee? How much? We normally need a reservation for 3 hours.
Parking—any restrictions?
General availability—days and times
Applicable restrictions—for example, use of electrical coffee makers, other appliances. Can we bring in food? What types of food?
Is there a kitchen? What, if any, dishes and utensils are available? Ovens, microwaves?
Audio-visual equipment available
Anything else you think is important for us to know
Thank you!
PLANNED ACTIVIST MEETING
What: An informal gathering about how to write an effective Letter to the Editor (LTE), send effective postcards, and how to make yourself heard. We will also review our Sierra Club candidates in the November election.
Where: At my home, 17976 Via Rio, Jupiter, FL
When: Friday, October 16, 2026 from 6:00-8:00 PM
Why: Because we all need to be effective activists
I will have blank postcards and targeted post cards, addresses to elected officials, pencils, stamps, LTE writing guides and pads. Bring your suggested environmental and conservation topics to discuss. Consider bringing your favorite topic to share.
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND: ANOTHER FUN, FLOWERY FUNDRAISER
Save the Date! You are invited to a Fun-Fundraiser. Create a Fall Floral Arrangement In collaboration with the Oleander Garden Club and the Flower Guild of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
When: Saturday, Nov. 21, 2026. Doors open at 9:30 AM, event is from 10:00-11:30 AM
Where: Holy Trinity Episcopal Church Hall, 211 Trinity Place, West Palm Beach, FL
A seed was recently planted in our Loxahatchee Group, the seed to start a book club. The focus would be on books with conservation and environmental themes—fiction and non-fiction.
Please consider joining us!
We will meet via Zoom from 1 to 3 pm on the first Monday of each month. The first meeting will be October 5.
Our first book for discussion is The Heart of the Wild: Essays on Nature, Conservation, and the Human Future published by Princeton University Press, also available in various formats through Amazon.
Amazon describes the book as “Timely and provocative reflections on the future of the wild in an increasingly human world. . .The Heart of the Wild brings together some of today’s leading scientists, humanists, and nature writers to offer a thought-provoking meditation on the urgency of learning about and experiencing our wild places in an age of rapidly expanding human impacts.”
We can decide what further direction our book club would like to go at our first meeting.
The Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group is collaborating with Mounts Botanical Gardens to bring award-winning writer Michael Grunwald to West Palm Beach for our January 2027 General Meeting.
Grunwald’s book, We Are Eating the Earth, published in 2025, explores the seemingly insurmountable challenge of feeding an exploding population with a finite amount of available arable land.
We Are Eating the Earth challenges and alarms the reader, just as the title implies. Grunwald faces the scientific data head on, grapples with the challenges of political trends, and searches for a way forward.
Biofuels were introduced in the 1990’s as an answer to alleviating our reliance on fossil fuels. By the early 2000’s, rapidly increasing climate change accelerated by greenhouse gas emissions, pressured government to come up with solutions.
The hope and answer for the U.S. was biofuels. Grunwald examines this initiative: “George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address... announced that to reduce reliance on foreign oil, he wanted to mandate 35 billion annual gallons of alternative fuels.” Scientists and environmentalists were behind this initiative.
But if corn production is used for fuel, where will corn used for food be grown? New fields would have to be plowed. The allure of biofuels never took into account the loss of forests and other natural lands which function efficiently as carbon sinkholes. “An acre of nature almost always store(s) vastly more carbon than an acre of farmland. That mean(s) the conversion of nature into cornfields increase(s) green house gas emissions.”
Here are some unintended consequences of the biofuels mandate, as quoted and paraphrased from We Are Eating the Earth:
• Quick math: 35 billion gallons of ethanol would require the entire U.S. corn harvest. That would mean no corn for feeding cattle, hogs, or chickens, no corn for corn syrup or cornflakes, no corn for the world’s leading corn exporter to export.
• Corn ethanol was clearly a new emissions bomb. Earlier papers said it was 20 percent better for the climate than gasoline. Scientists found it 93 percent worse. Five-sixths of the corn diverted to ethanol would be replaced with new farmland, which meant much more deforestation.
• When biofuel mandates send grain prices up, forests come down.
• In just six months, as exploding biofuel demand had driven grain prices to record highs, Brazil had lost an area of forest the size of Rhode Island.
Land is not free, after all.
WHERE ADVENTURE MEETS CONSERVATION:
Join the Loxahatchee Refuge's First-Ever Wild 75 BioBlitz
75TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2026
This year marks a big milestone for the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge: 75 years of protecting one of the last wild pieces of the Everglades.
To celebrate, the Refuge is holding its first-ever Wild 75 BioBlitz — a fun, hands-on adventure where curiosity counts and every observation helps tell the story of wild Florida.
A BioBlitz is a fast-paced species hunt with a purpose. Scientists, teachers, students, families, hikers, birders, plant lovers, and first-time explorers team up to find, identify, and record as many living things as possible in a short period of time. That's where you come in.
“In conservation biology, you can't protect something if you don't know it's there.”Dr. David Bowles, Conservation Biologist
Come have some fun! Guided hikes led by expert naturalists, botanists, birders, and biologists will begin at 10:00 a.m, 11:00 a.m, and 12:00 p.m, each lasting one to two hours. Along the way, you'll learn how to spot the small, strange, beautiful, and easy-to-miss life all around you — and record it using the free iNaturalist app. Training will be available, so no experience is needed. Just bring your sense of wonder, closed-toe shoes, sun protection, and a filled, refillable water bottle.
This is a fee-free day for everyone. Come take a hike, meet fellow nature fans, and help celebrate the people, wildlife, and wild places that make the Loxahatchee Refuge worth protecting.
Where is everyone? Too hot to do anything? Not quite.
On July 22, Limestone Creek Natural Area was reopened. After necessary repairs to recreational infrastructure, the gates finally reopened and it’s time to hit the trails. The reopening celebration was attended by Commissioner Maria Marino, District 1, and ERM Deputy Director Michael Stahl. Among the incredible Natural Areas volunteers who finished planting the site and checked out the upgrades was Sierra Club member Maria Pizano-Balatovis, shown here. Here's a video
On July 25, 2026, a group of 17 volunteers arrived bright and early (7:30 am) at Winding Waters Natural Area in West Palm Beach to pick up trash. The first area the volunteers cleaned was the parking lot and kayak launch area. Then the group walked the natural area’s fence line along Haverhill Road. A few volunteers like Randy Carle were extra adventurous and cleaned the wooded areas on the other side of the fence. The volunteers removed trash from almost 1.5 miles of roadway, filling 12 large trash bags with bottles, cans, plastic jugs, plastic bags, pieces of Styrofoam, food containers and cardboard boxes.
Summertime for Ron Hainesis in the Northeast because that’s where the grandchildren are. And because that’s where the dragon is - see photo. It’s his favorite canoeing place because it combines getting outside with yard art, two of his favorite things. The dragon is on the Swift River in Massachusetts. Go here for photos of all the yard art along the river.
Heroes in the heat! On August 20, 2026, a small, but mighty group of volunteers including our own Zara Brenner, pictured on the left, spent several hours removing trash from Snook Island Natural Area in Lake Worth Beach. The natural area, located in Lake Worth Lagoon adjacent to the Lake Worth Beach Golf Club, is a wetland wonderland featuring lush mangrove forests, oyster beds and open sandy areas perfect for nesting shorebirds. Volunteers concentrated their cleanup efforts along the mangrove-lined shoreline, where the large aerial roots of red mangrove trees trap trash brought in by high tides. The volunteers braved high heat and humidity to remove a wide variety of trash.
On August 12, 2026, seven volunteers including our own Jean Duprey and Randy Carle and three ERM staff spent several hours removing trash from Jewell-Steinhardt Cove in Lake Worth Beach. Trash was also removed from a wooded area full of seagrapes and mangroves. Can't forget about all the beer cans removed during the cleanup event! The group removed 1,240 pounds of trash – that is more than 1/2 a ton!
If you have escaped the heat, you may be doing great things wherever you are. We would love to hear about them and share them. Send them to Linda Smithe. Thank you everyone!
What's PBC BERR You Ask? It's Not An Air Conditioning Company!
The alphabet soup stands for Palm Beach County Built Environment Risk Reduction, which used to be the Palm Beach County Office of Resiliency, PBC OOR.
Sierra Club has had a long and productive relationship with PBC OOR and are looking forward to a long and productive relationship with PBC BERR. We love the whole alphabet!.
Check out their website. Sign up for their newsletter and see where they list us for upcoming events.
Above is the BEFORE shot. It was all lawn. While pretty enough, it wasn't supporting any birds, bees or butterflies.
And here is what it looks like today. We're getting there. Pollinator friendly perennials are beginning to fill in.
REWILDING
By Lisa Hanley, Public Lands committee chair
Rewilding is the practice of returning land to its original, wildlife friendly native state. It's a process that takes time and patience and is happening all over the United States.
Doug Tallamy started the movement by showing how native plants support local food webs and insect populations.
Public initiatives like Homegrown National Park inspired people to convert patches of grass into native habitats. During the Pandemic lock downs, more people joined the movement, while concerns about climate change and global insect and bird declines added fuel to the fire.
Ten years ago we bought a place in Deer Isle, Maine, our summer sanctuary. It came with an 1830 Cape Cod cottage, five acres of field, wild blueberries, woods and two acres of carefully maintained lawn. The previous owners mowed the field and blueberries twice a year and the grass once a week so there weren't many butterflies, pollinators or birds – not to mention no blueberries!
This was not acceptable to us!
Our Maine ecosystem is far different from the sandy ridge we live on in Boynton Beach, but just as tough on plants. Think clay and rocks. That's why going native makes so much sense. The plants we grow in both places are adapted to these sterile soils.
Our rewilding process is taking time, but it is happening—both in Boynton Beach and Deer Isle.
Rewilding is more than simply not mowing. Sod must be removed or killed and plants must be introduced. Thankfully in the last ten years, the number of native plant nurseries in Maine has exponentially increased, native plant sales introduced, and plants are much more available.
Now we regularly host monarchs on their migration journey, hundreds of bumble bees and other interesting pollinators, beautiful butterflies, hummingbirds, and other feathered friends. This is a work in progress, stick around for another ten years to see how we're doing!
If you want to rewild your Florida home, here's a helpful start. Join our friends at the Palm Beach County Chapter of the Native Plant Society on September 15, 2026, from 6:30-8:45 pm for their From Lawn to Living Landscape presentation.
SIERRA CLUB BROWARD GROUP EVENTS
September General Meeting: Turning Your Ideas Into Action
When: Thursday, September 10 from 6:30 PM - 8:15 PM
Where:Veterans Park, 7600 NW 50th St, Lauderhill, FL 3335
FEATURED SPEAKER: Jessie Bastos, Broward Soil and Water Conservation District
Jessie Bastos is a passionate advocate for her community. She serves on multiple school, environmental, and municipal planning committees, including as an elected supervisor for the Broward Soil & Water Conservation District, vice chair of Davie's planning & zoning committee, and chair of Davie's agricultural & environmental advisory committee. Throughout her various roles, Jessie has learned how to hone her strong creative, interpersonal, and organizational skills to bring initiatives from idea to fruition. She is excited to share what she's learned to help others become more effective community advocates.
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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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