A Natural Treasure: Florida's Sandhills & Grasslands
A few miles southeast of Lake City, a 439-acre pristine sandhill ecosystem thrives. Tiny fall flowers stipple colored pinpoints onto an expanse of golden grasses. An occasional longleaf pine tree towers above the prairie where an astounding variety and number of native plants flourish. It’s an island that supports wildlife in a landscape being rapidly consumed by urban development.
Here, gopher tortoise, Eastern Indigo Snake, eastern meadowlark, Bachman’s sparrow, pollinators, and wintering and nesting grassland bird species that are in decline elsewhere abound. The sandhill ecosystem feeds Ichetucknee Springs, filtering water and recharging the Floridan Aquifer.
That’s why the Alachua Conservation Trust and USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) put the J.Y. Wilson Trust property into an easement this year, protecting it forever.
