A Naturalist in Florida
| NARRATOR: Sometimes a book comes along that changes forever the way we think and act. The windward road was such a book. Its literary Excellence was also recognized, a chapter winning the o henry Short story award. Published in 1956, the windward road called The worlds attention to the precarious future of sea turtles; Especially those who came to nest on the beaches at tortuguero In costa rica. His findings moved archie to become an active spokesman For the protection of sea turtles. And inspired a group of men To form the international brotherhood of the green turtle, now The caribbean conservation corps. This is the archie carr national Wildlife refuge on central florida's atlantic coast. A place where On summer nights endangered sea turtles come ashore to lay their Eggs.....created in 1989, it is a fitting tribute to the man who Loved these ancient creatures. | |
| CHUCK CARR: My wife's parents live very near the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, down near Melbourne. They live in Satellite Beach. We took the kids to see the grandfolks and went the short distance down to the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. And there's this sign on the highway with letters two feet tall, and that is startling. My name is Archie the III, and actually has my name there on AIA. So that's impressive at the outset. We stopped and photographed ourselves in front of the sign. But then the rest of that story is for us--all of us in the family--very, very moving. This is a National Wildlife Refuge , that's an acknowledgment by the government of the United States of the significance of Archie Carr and of the sea turtles who cling to survival on that particular beach. That's all very very moving and makes one proud to be an American, a Floridian, and to be a member of the Archie Carr family to boot. | |
| ARCHIE: It is an impressive thing to see, the pilgrimage of a sea creature back to the land its ancestors left a hundred million years ago. The turtle is wild and skittish when she first touches shore. Anything but steady quiet will scare her back to sea. But once she has gone up onto the dry feel of the windblown sand and begun to dig, if a female is really of a mind to lay she can be watched by gangs of people waving flashlights in her face, and will go on through her set maneuvers oblivious to any amount of hullabaloo. Everybody ought to see a sea turtle nesting. | |
| CATHY: I had rented a house a couple of miles up this beach. Looked outside one night - midnight or one o'clock - and I saw what I thought was a big log just coming in with the tide. When it got up to the beach it kept moving on its own, and I was fascinated with what was going on. And I had heard there were sea turtles here. It was my first experience and it was what made me decide to stay here. | |
| JEAN: Well I had been walking in mornings on the beach and I saw the tracks.. And so we came on one of the night excursions to see the nest laying. The night we were down here some teenagers were walking on the beach and they were being quite noisy. so we invited the teens to come and experience this with us. and they were just speechless when they left. | |
| JIM: It's a very moving experience; thrilling to see it. | |
| FRED:When we arrived on the beach we sat down on the sand and all of a sudden the sand underneath us started moving; and all of a sudden there were about one thousand turtles came out of nowhere that were about that big and started heading for the ocean. So we went back up and got Martha and we came down and we watched all these turtles heading into the ocean. | |
| MARTY: To know that turtles sustained our early pioneers and people here with eggs and meat, and now we can protect them. They give us lot of joy, just watching. | |
| JEAN: I think the people who live here in Melbourne Beach are very cooperative, making sure the lights are turned off on the beach side when the turtles are getting ready to hatch. and everybody seems to be very cooperative. | |
| JIM: Its very important because, not just individual homeowners but businesses, the motels, even the power companies with street lights, everybody has the same respect for the turtles. I wish there were more Archie Carrs. |
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