The Turkey Creek Sanctuary is a small nature reserve in the city of Palm Bay in Brevard County, Florida, and incorporates both salty hammock and sand pine ridge habitats. The sanctuary is part of the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) program. It has 1.85 miles (3 km) of boardwalk paths and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of jogging trails through native forest to Turkey Creek, an excellent site for seeing birds, turtles, manatees, alligators as well as other local wildlife; there is a canoe deck on the creek. The creek is an important breeding ground for both salt and fresh water fish. The Sanctuary is part of the East Florida section of the Great Florida Birding Trail.
The property was donated to the Florida Audubon Society and the city of Palm Bay in 1978, and fundraising to conserve the area began in 1981. By 1994 113 acres (46 ha) was under the protection of the voluntary management committee. The park is open daily, from 7am to sunset.
The Margaret Hames Nature Center was opened in 1992 and offers environmental education programs, including nature day camps.
Famous quotes containing the words turkey, creek and/or sanctuary:
“You can make as good a design out of an American turkey as a Japanese out of his native stork.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)