CHARLES HILLINGER’S AMERICA : Florida and Fauna : Homosassa Springs Theme Park Becomes a State Park Emphasizing Native Wildlife

HOMOSASSA SPRINGS, Fla. —  The golden spider monkeys, African pygmy goats, Eurasian fallow deer, exotic reptiles and snakes are being traded for native Florida animals or sold.

Eventually, all the non-native species will be gone except for Lucifer, a 25-year-old hippo that will live out his life here.

The exotic animals for 20 years were part of the menagerie at Homosassa Springs Nature World, a commercial nature theme park on the Gulf Coast 70 miles north of Tampa.

But the theme park is no more. In January, 1988, it became the newest of more than 100 Florida state parks. It is now called Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park.

Overnight, several employees of Nature World donned uniforms and were commissioned Florida State park rangers. All 27 Nature World workers were hired to do the same job for the state.

The park is 150 acres of lush, tropical flora and fauna, a wildlife sanctuary embracing a giant spring from which flow 6 million gallons of water an hour. Called the Spring of 10,000 Fish, it forms a huge, 55-foot-deep Water Bowl, the headwaters of the Homosassa River that runs 9 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.

Thousands of freshwater and saltwater fish congregate all year in the gigantic natural fishbowl that also serves as a halfway house for injured and orphaned manatees, Florida’s endangered blimp-like sea mammals.

“When this was a theme park, we were more entertainment-oriented,” explained J.P. Garner, assistant park manager. “Now the emphasis is on interpretive programs. We’re getting rid of our exotic wildlife and introducing animals native to the state we haven’t had, such as threatened Florida black bears, Florida bobcats, white-tailed deer. We have a new reptile program featuring native Florida snakes.”

Garner ran the park from 1975 until the transition when the state brought in Tom Lindley, a career parks and recreation department employee, to be park superintendent.

“I don’t know of another privately owned theme park anywhere in America that converted to a state park,” said Garner. “If it wasn’t for the people of Citrus County, this pristine tropical forest and wildlife sanctuary would have been bulldozed out of existence and replaced with a housing development.”

When residents of Citrus County learned the park was offered for sale to developers, they circulated petitions to save it. There was a ballot issue on the question of whether to approve or reject the park’s purchase by the county. It squeaked through by 189 votes.

The county bought the park for $3.8 million as a stop-gap measure until the state could purchase it. The county ran the park for two years, then the state bought it from the county for $3.4 million. The state has spent $150,000 so far refurbishing it.

There are enclosed exhibits, a bird cage, black bear, cougar, deer and otter habitats, birds of prey and reptile exhibits, a petting zoo and a unique 160-ton floating observatory in the Spring of 10,000 Fish.

The tropical forest is alive with wild birds and animals. Trails penetrate dense jungle areas. Pontoon-deck boats take visitors up a river where alligators, crocodiles, flamingos, deer and a myriad of birds is encountered. Wild white ibis are all over the place.

The Audubon Society conducts its annual Christmas bird census here.

A highlight of every visit to Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park is seeing manatees in their natural surroundings.

Nine of the slow-moving, frolicking, air-breathing, totally aquatic gentle giants live in the spring-fed natural fishbowl. The manatees are blocked from swimming down the Homosassa River by a barred underwater gate with room enough between bars for all the fish to swim through.

Now and throughout most of its history, the park has been a haven for rehabilitating injured manatees and raising the orphan sea mammals for eventual release to the wild.

Three times a day, visitors watch Betsy Dearth in a wet suit in the water feeding manatees lettuce, cabbage, carrots and specially prepared biscuits of ground corn, corn meal, beet pulp, wheat and oat seed, supplementary food for the wild grass they munch on all day.

Besides offering them wild grass growing in the river’s headwaters, Dearth provides the warm-blooded, vegetarian manatees hydroponic grass growing in a green house next to the water.

Dearth writes up daily reports on the sea mammals that grow as long as 13 feet, weigh more than 2,000 pounds and live 50 to 60 years. She measures them, keeps track of their health and notes behavior activities.

“I feel privileged to work with them,” Dearth said.

The closest land relative of the manatee is the elephant. Manatees are gray, homely beasts with whiskered snouts and paddle-like fore limbs with no hind flippers.

A deeply scarred manatee named Amanda swam to Dearth, who remarked: “Collisions with boats are so common, it is estimated that 85% of the 1,200 manatees living along Florida’s shores have been scarred by boats.”

The 1978 Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act established the entire state of Florida as a refuge and sanctuary for manatees. Speed zone signs are posted in all boat harbors frequented by manatees to prevent collisions with the mammals.

Save The Manatee bumper stickers are seen on cars across Florida.

In cooperation with Save The Manatee Club, headquartered at 500 N. Maitland Ave., Maitland, Fla. 32751, Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park launched the Adopt-A-Manatee program Oct. 7.

A manatee can be adopted for $15 a year or $10 a year for an entire school class.

Once you adopt a manatee, you become a member of the Save the Manatee Club and receive a packet that includes an adoption certificate, a history and photograph of the adoptee and general information on manatees. A club newsletter is sent out five times a year.

Repeat visitors to this park, famed for its tropical forests, giant natural fish bowl, white ibis and manatees, often do a double-take, and ask, “Hey, why are you guys dressed in Ranger uniforms?”

That’s when they learn for the first time how a theme park became a state park.