Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in Brevard County, Florida

Photograph: Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge Sunrise (5776833409).jpg by Keenan Adams, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region · Public domain · Cropped to the 1200x750 attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Opened and checked against the place before installation.

Brevard County attraction

Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge

Brevard County · Atlantic Coast

Twenty and a half miles of shoreline between Melbourne Beach and Wabasso Beach, protecting the most significant loggerhead nesting ground in the world.

QUESTIONS THAT NAME THIS PLACE

Where Can You See Sea Turtles Nesting in Florida?

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge runs for 20.5 miles of beach and shoreline between Melbourne Beach and Wabasso Beach, crossing from Brevard into Indian River County. It was created to protect the most significant loggerhead sea turtle nesting area in the world and the most significant green turtle nesting area in North America. The refuge itself does not run turtle walks, digs or releases, though other organizations in the area do. The Barrier Island Center at Doc Ehrhart Sanctuary is the place to go for interpretation of what the refuge protects. It was established in 1991. The refuge itself owns only 258 acres, but the Archie Carr Working Group, which brings together state and county government with private conservation bodies, protects more than 2,600 acres along this shore between them. Between fifteen and thirty thousand sea turtle nests are laid here every year, somewhere between a fifth and a third of all loggerhead and green turtle nesting in the United States. Leatherbacks nest here in small numbers too. Archie Carr was a University of Florida zoologist who took the university's first doctorate in zoology in 1937 and wrote eleven books and more than 120 papers on sea turtles before his death in 1987. The habitats are beach and dune, coastal strand and scrub, maritime hammock and mangrove, holding brown pelicans, gopher tortoises, manatees and crabs

GETTING THERE

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