With birds and birders flocking to Lake Apopka, the Orange Audubon Society hopes its dream to build a nature center on the giant freshwater lake also takes flight this giving season.
The not-for-profit environmental group’s local chapter, now in its 60th year, is hosting the North Shore Birding Festival at the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, a birders paradise, while raising money for a permanent installation to educate visitors about the beauty and challenges of wildlife.
The nature center would be at the entrance of the popular 11-mile drive, 2850 Lust Road.
Orange Audubon is relying on its reputation to find donors and corporate sponsors for its $4.5 million project.
The all-volunteer birding organization already has plenty to crow about.
It won recognition in October as Audubon’s top large chapter in Florida and earned an award of merit from the American Institute of Architecture’s Orlando chapter for the design plan to convert rather than demolish an old cement-block repair shop to create the visitor’s center.
“We’re flying high but we have a ways to go yet,” said Deborah Green, chapter president.
Their goal is $1 million, though the group hopes to raise more by offering naming rights, she said.
Red Huber / Orlando Sentinel
An alligator opens his jaws Friday, July 14, 2017 catching a fish in a lake off Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive . The city of Apopka thinks eco-tourism will be important to its economic future and provided land to develop a birding park on 70 acres formerly owned by the St. Johns River Water Management District at the entrance of the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive. The park proposed by Apopka will give birders a place to huddle before venturing out on popular wildlife trails. (Red Huber/Staff Photographer)
The nature center, located at the entrance of the 11-mile, one-way wildlife drive, would be the most prominent structure in a 70-acre uplands birding park. The site was previously owned by the St. Johns River Water Management District, then the city of Apopka. The district turned the land over to the city in 2018 with restrictions requiring it to be used to develop nature-based recreation and education.
Green said Audubon, which has a 30-year, renewable lease for the site, hopes to break ground in the spring.
“I’m hoping and wishing for completion by next December in time for the next birding festival,” she said. “It will have a very cool, bird-watching annex — with bird-safe glass — looking out into a very beautifully designed native garden and a water feature to welcome birds.”
Green said the center also will feature avian murals by Apopka wildlife muralist Delia Miller, 20.
The nature center was designed “green,” incorporating energy-efficient lighting and other sustainability features, including captured rainwater to flush toilets. She described the birding park as “a little jewel” separating the lake from new residential development to the east.
The annual birding festival draws binoculared avian enthusiasts from all over. Lake Apopka, once among the state’s most polluted water bodies, has rebounded with the help of government money and now boasts a rich array of birds with 377 species having been seen there.
“It’s never not beautiful,” said Lynn Marie Folts, a photographer who has captured the lake’s wildlife scenes for over a decade.
Her photos sometimes depict raw nature: a blue heron gobbling a bullfrog, another devouring a snake.
Deborah Green, president of Orange Audubon Society, peers at birds near the entrance to the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive on Lust Road in Apopka, Friday, March 22, 2024. She is leading Audubon’s fund-raising effort to build a nature center at the 70-acre birding park adjacent to the entrance of the wildlife drive. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
“I’m very passionate about wildlife in general but particularly at Lake Apopka,” said Folts, who is leading a sunset tour on Sunday. “You can see bobcats and alligators and snakes out there and, on a good day, virtually every type of bird that flies and nests.”
Folts said the unpaved, low-speed wildlife drive, which opened in May 2015, offers the bicycling and motoring public an up-close, unfiltered view of the 30,000-acre lake and marshes that have gained a worldwide reputation for the size of their alligators and diversity of the bird life.
“A nature center is an important next step to help people better understand and appreciate what they’re looking at,” she said.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com