The Manatee Viewing Center welcomed about 50 students from Tampa’s Dowdell Middle Magnet School for a major planting project on November 5, 2007. The students, in sixth through eighth grades, are currently involved in an environmental studies program at Dowdell in which they’ve learned to grow and raise two species of native Florida wetland plants in their school nursery. The project earned a nomination for the 2007 Hillsborough County Education Foundation Business Partnership Awards.
For their program, the students nurtured approximately 2,000 native plants. With the help of teachers and Manatee Viewing Center staff members, the students added their plants to a sensitive wetlands area just south of the center, near Apollo Beach in southern Hillsborough County. The project helped the students learn about wetland habitats and native plant species while assisting the center’s critical habitat restoration efforts.
“We were proud to have the help of this dedicated group of students from Dowdell for this important project,” said Wendy Valle Anastasiou, environmental specialist at the Manatee Viewing Center. “Not only did it help the students develop their knowledge of wetland habitats and native plant species, but it also served the ongoing efforts of the Manatee Viewing Center in our quest to provide environmental education and stewardship to the public.”
The Dowdell planting project is one of several restoration projects the Manatee Viewing Center has undertaken recently. Earlier in 2007, members of local and national organizations joined center staff and volunteers on the Newman Branch Costal Restoration Project, covering approximately 12 acres of wetlands and rare saltern habitat near the Manatee Viewing Center.
Like the Newman Branch project, the Dowdell planting project will ideally invigorate the natural ecosystem by creating suitable habitats for the many varieties of bird and animal life that call the area home.
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