Gus wants to save his Florida

For a while, after the completion of Interstate 75 south of Tampa, it appeared as if much of Gus' world would remain isolated from the crush of development. Businesses dried up along U.S. 41, the old route south that cut through Gibsonton and continued on to Apollo Beach and Ruskin (with a stop at the old Coffee Cup restaurant) and on into Bradenton and Sarasota.

Of course, it was only a temporary pause. Land - waterfront land - is a finite resource, and gradually developers began working their way along the shoreline all the way to the Little Manatee River and Cockroach Bay.

Gus Muench is a crabber. He gets up before dawn and heads out into the water before most of us have tuned in to the first traffic report. He builds artificial oyster reefs. He largely was responsible for the signs and buoys near launching docks used as guides to protect the environment.

The man from Cockroach Bay

He is as much a part of that landscape as the mounds that mark the old Uzita Indian village. He has been fighting a decades-long battle to preserve not just the land, but the fragile environment as well. Among his ideas is the establishment of a park - and not just any park. Here is a small part of a letter he sent last week:

"Born in Tampa, I moved to Cockroach Bay 39 years ago...The Uzita Indian village sat on the banks of the Little Manatee River and those native people lived away from a world of population expansion for hundreds of years. When Hernando de Soto sailed into Tampa Bay their lives changed forever and they ultimately disappeared.

"In 1976 I started commercially harvesting blue crabs and gill netting mullet. And times were good. Today there are more crab traps than blue crabs and we ask what happened.

"In 1986 I started the Little Manatee Preservation Committee and we did a survey. We counted eight boats one day. Today that number is more than 100. What will it be like when all of north Manatee and south Hillsborough counties are urbanized? Boaters continue to ignore rules and destroy sea grass with outboard motors.

"A small group of us are creating 'Friends of the Uzita Heritage Park.' We're lobbying for a new county park to replace Cockroach Bay Park. The boundaries would start at the Little Manatee River, run to the Manatee County line and include county and state uplands, with submerged lands out to a six-foot depth. Sea grasses would be listed as areas of critical concern. The county's EPC Environmental Protection Commission has counted more than 30,000 prop scars. We want to create a new Uzita Heritage Park dedicated to low-impact recreation and then create a sister cultural learning center such as the Weedon Island Preserve in Pinellas County."

Friends of the Uzita

Muench thinks all of this can be done with land already owned by various governmental entities. His group is planning an organizational meeting at 6 p.m. July 15 at the Ruskin Library. There are lots of issues and pros and cons, but Gus Muench is on to something, and that something is a piece of old Florida like you never will see again. He deserves to be listened to.