Dragonfly Expeditions searches for the best candidates to act as guides. We are proud to have among our leaders: published environmental and historical authors, renowned photographers, archaeologists, professors, journalists, biologists, ecologists, entomologists, botanists and historians. A general theme within our family is volunteer work and activism. In the past, volunteer groups gathered and hauled 2 dump truck loads of trash out of the Burns Lake area in the Everglades and volunteered annually at Clyde Butcher’s Labor Day Muckabouts to support the Big Cypress Preserve. Over the last three years, our guides and staff have been extensively involved in clearing invasive exotic vegetation and foreign debris and replacing them with mangroves and buttonwoods in the gardens of the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.
One of Dragonfly Expeditions’ tours, “Great Discoveries on the Bay – A Kayak Journey” departs from the Rickenbacker Causeway and shares with visitors the history and ecology of Biscayne Bay while viewing local treasures such as the Ermita de La Caridad del Cobre and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens from the water. Since the inception of this tour we have had tidal limitations due to fallen trees and other debris as well as a buildup of trash that washes in with the tide and storms.
Along with the receptive management team at Vizcaya, Dragonfly Expeditions brought together a partnership between Sailboards Miami (on the Rickenbacker Causeway), La Salle/Immaculata High School (to the south of Vizcaya property) and Hands on Miami (which has years of experience handling volunteer events in regards to liability, signup, and access to a large database of volunteers). This combined partnership has many man-hours under its belt which have produced major results at one of Miami’s public treasures.
Over the past three years Dragonfly Expeditions
has taken pride in promoting and volunteering work-hours on a monthly basis in the summer and fall. We organize monthly land based clean-ups that are small-scale and deal with sensitive areas and detailed work that would not get done with a larger group. We also promote several water based cleanups done via kayak with our friends at Sailboards Miami.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those that have participated in previous years and welcome anyone new that would like to contribute to the community through our efforts at Vizcaya.
The land based events will continue to be held in 2010 on the last Thursday mornings of the month:
Thursday, August 26th
Thursday, September 30th
Thursday, October 28th
The water based cleanups will be announced via Facebook and Twitter or you can call us periodically to check (305-774-9019).
If you would like to volunteer for any of these events please contact Megan Fries at mfries@dragonflyexpeditions.com or 305-774-9019 for further information.
