Ex-fish farm becomes feeding ground for wading birds, other wildlife

Just a stone's throw from a massive suburban housing development, heavy equipment drones across 23 acres, transforming a former fish farm into freshwater wetlands.

Already, an alligator has slithered across the newly contoured ground and into the shallow wetland to try it out for size. Wading birds nesting in Tampa Bay are also already dangling a toe in the new feeding grounds.

Ekker Preserve, on Symmes Road, was once an outdoor playground for the Ekker family, who hunted, fished and gardened there.

"It's an 85-acre oasis for wildlife still living in the area," said Brandt Henningsen, of the Surface Water Improvement and Management program, directed locally through the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

SWIM is spearheading restoration of the land, owned jointly by Hillsborough County and Swiftmud.

Pete and Jeanie (Ekker) Johnson sold the land to the county's Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program to preserve it in perpetuity. As part of the sale agreement, the couple keeps the homestead on the property and will act as site security for as long as they wish to stay.

It's still their small piece of paradise, Pete Johnson said of the land made up of pine flatwoods and swamp, flanked on one side by Bullfrog Creek.

The stories roll off Jeanie Johnson's tongue of days gone by in the 1930s and '40s, when her grandparents, Martha and Hugo Ekker and her parents, Marie and Alfred Ekker, raised a family, entertained troops from MacDill Air Force Base and lived off the land in Gibsonton.

Her aunt would shuck oysters and haul the jar-full to school on the bus, then trade with a school mate for a flat of strawberries. It's how people lived then. Off the land, never going hungry, despite their lack of material possessions.

The Johnson home remains an archive to days gone by, filled with boxes of fading black and white photographs, school records, deeds and other memorabilia.

Outside, though, the land is getting a facelift.

Wetlands to the south, uplands to the north, replete with a thinned-out pine forest and new "gopher tortoise condos" created by Hillsborough County. The mounds of white sand should be perfect for the tortoises to burrow in, making new homes for themselves and the dozens of critters known to share their underground lairs.

"The area was historically pine flatwoods, but once the 140 fish ponds were dug, there were no trees left" on the front of the property, Henningsen said. So the decision was made to transform the fish farm into wetlands, using the ponds as part of the design.

Berms along the property's edge provide sound and visual buffers and habitat, Henningsen said.
Plants with names like lizard's tail, frog's-bit and horse tail - a plant ancient indians used to scrub their pots - will be planted throughout the property.

Eventually the land where sandhill cranes, flying squirrels and barred owls freely roam, will be open to the public. Construction on the wetlands should be complete in about two months.