Slicing through slash pine scrub, curving around arching mangroves, then sloping into shallow saltwater, Shell Island Road has to be one of the most drop-dead gorgeous dead-ends in Southwest Florida.
But setting aside its beauty for a moment, it also has to be one of the most important.
It leads to the heart of Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, which holds, quite literally, the key to Collier County’s fiscal survival, advocates say. The reserve attracts more than 285,000 visitors who spend nearly $11.5 million in the region annually, a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found. Apart from being a tourist draw, Rookery Bay shelters the seeds of disaster recovery.
What if a storm ‒ or a series of storms ‒ scraped Naples’ narrow, development-lined sands bare? No plants, no dunes. No dunes, no beaches. No beaches, no economy ‒ or at least nothing like the economy to which we’ve become accustomed, they say. “We’re facing kind of a natural emergency as we have these natural disasters,” said Chad Washburn, vice president of conservation at Naples Botanical Garden.