Moving Up From Florida

Left: Birdlife, so indicative of nature's health, abounds in the ACE Basin.

All this timbering, hunting, fishing, and farming, he indicates, seems not to bother endangered species. The wood stork, for example, migrated up from Florida, liked the neighborhood, and passed along the word to wintering whooping cranes. Bald eagles have built some 30 nests here. Today, we see only two of them across a wide marsh. Leaving Dean's headquarters, however, I spot an eagle perched just above the sand lane, with a smart smirk on his beak for catching me without a camera.

He seemed as near as the hummingbirds that flit outside the windows of the 1828 Grove Plantation House. This artifact of late-Federal architecture now serves as headquarters of the ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Like the home's first owner, task force member and refuge manager Jane Griess peers through the same wavy glass and sees the same forests and fields that were there in the early 19th century.

"The ACE Basin looked like this 200 years ago. It's neat to think it's going to look the same in another century," she muses.

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