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Pelican Island's Centennial Trail to Reopen

National Wildlife Refuge improves Centennial National Recreation Trail

By Joanna Webb, US Fish & Wildlife Service

The Centennial Trail at Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge will reopen on Saturday, October 6 during National Wildlife Refuge Week. The public reopening event will dedicate The Centennial Trail as a National Recreation Trail and highlight the trail improvements completed this summer.

On March 14, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt established 5.5 acre Pelican Island in Sebastian as the first national wildlife refuge. From that small beginning has grown a national system of 547 special places for wildlife— the National Wildlife Refuge System. For the first 100 years of Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, the only way to view the Pelican Island rookery was by privately owned boat. That all changed in 2003 when The Centennial Trail was constructed and opened as the refuge's first public facility during the Centennial celebration of Pelican Island. The Centennial Trail gives visitors an opportunity to view the historic Pelican Island rookery without the use of a boat. In addition to providing the only public, land-based view of Pelican Island, The Centennial Trail is the only public facility that interprets the National Wildlife Refuge System to such an extent.

The focal interpretive theme of the Centennial Trail is the first 100 years of growth of the National Wildlife Refuge System. One unique feature of the boardwalk is that every other plank has been engraved with the name, state and establishment year of each one of the 547 national wildlife refuges in the system. The planks are arranged in descending order of establishment with the concept that visitors walk the planks of time back through the history culminating at an 18-foot observation tower overlooking Pelican Island in the Indian River Lagoon.

The recent improvements made to the trail include replacing all 547 worn planks with new, denser boards and engraving the refuge names deeper so that they won't wear away again. The design and installation of 16 permanent educational panels along the trail was also completed with the help of a combined Wild Birds Unlimited and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant and additional funds from the Pelican Island Preservation Society. In addition to interpreting the 100-year history of the refuge system, the educational panels provide a pictorial interpretation of the refuge fauna and flora, including birds of Pelican Island and mammals of the refuge. The recent trail improvements have been accomplished with the help of local volunteers, a local Youth Conservation Corps crew and Service volunteers from othernational wildlife refuges.

There are now over 1,000 trails in the U.S. that have been designated as National Recreation Trails on federal, state, municipal, and privately owned lands. These designations recognize exemplary trails of local and regional significance and currently range from less than a mile to 485 miles in length. Six trails in Florida received National Recreation Trail status in 2007 by American Trails, with The Centennial Trail the only one on a national wildlife refuge. This new trail designation along with the existing designation as a National Scenic Byway further promotes Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge to travelers seeking to explore the natural world with minimum impact. The Federal Highway Administration's National Scenic Byway Program manages 126 distinct byways, three of which are in Florida. The Indian River Lagoon Scenic Byway is 150 miles in length, includes three national wildlife refuges and gives access to a national estuary providing habitat to more wildlife species than anywhere in North America.

The reopening and dedication event of The Centennial Trail on Saturday morning, October 6, will begin with a family early-bird tour of Bird's Impoundment Trail at 7am. The National Recreation Trail dedication will begin at 8am at the Pelican Island Viewing Area, followed by a tour of The Centennial Trail for the first time since it was closed for improvements in mid-August. Tours of the refuge butterfly garden will be offered throughout the morning and the Pelican Island Preservation Society, the refuge friends group, will be selling special National Wildlife Refuge Week t-shirts. Refuge trails will remain open to the public throughout the day and on a daily basis thereafter.

The dedication event will be located at the Pelican Island Viewing Area, 1Ú2 mile south on Historic Jungle Trail off Highway A1A in Sebastian. Visitors arriving for the early-bird tour should meet at the Pelican Island Welcome and Orientation Area, the first parking lot on the left when traveling south on Jungle Trail. Reservations are not required. For more information, please call Joanna Webb at (772) 562-3909 ext 258 or email pelicanisland@fws.gov.

Read more about the Centennial National Recreation Trail at Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge

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