Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge

Millions of years ago, sea levels were much higher and Lake Wales Ridge was an island in the ocean. As Florida was slowly exposed by the receding sea waters, that island got larger and larger until it became just a high spot in the middle of the Florida peninsula. There are places on the ridge now that are more than 300 feet above sea level. During all those years, a sand pine scrub habitat evolved along that ridge and supported numerous species of plants and wildlife that thrived in the area until the arrival of big agriculture and land developers.

Today, Florida sand pine scrub habitat has been reduced to a tiny percentage of what it once was, and that habitat has been highly fragmented. Many of the species that lived there are now extinct. Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge is a landscape preservation initiative on the part of the US Fish & Wildlife Service. These 1,858 acres were set aside primarily to protect and preserve threatened and/or endangered plant species (31 species in particular, 22 of them on the federal list), in addition to local endangered animal species like the Bluetail mole skink, sand skink, eastern indigo snake and the Florida scrub jay.

Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge is composed of four separate pieces of land strung out between Davenport and Sebring, Florida. It is an integral part of a network of sandhill and scrub preserves owned by Archbold Biological Station, Highlands County, Polk County, the Nature Conservancy, the State of Florida and two water management districts. Some of these properties, including Lake Wales Ridge NWR, are not open to the general public. As these properties preserve a large piece of the only Florida scrub habitat left, they protect extremely rare plants like the scrub lupine, the Florida ziziphus, scrub blazing star and Garrett's scrub palm.

Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge is administered as part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex.