BY MICHELE MILLER
What’s What New Port Richey
Since January of 2021, Rebekah Jenkins has been settling into her new working digs at Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park in New Port Richey. Six months in, she’s getting to know her way around.
While her home base is the education center, Jenkins has been out leading day hikes at Key Vista, Crews Lake Wilderness, and Starkey Wilderness Parks. She headed up various park activities such as recycling arts and crafts activities for two Earth Day celebrations. And she’s busy planning new programs for the fall.
Early on, though, it was a bit quiet – especially at the education center.
During the school year, the education center is typically teeming with middle school kids partaking in the Pasco County Schools’ Watershed Ambassadors Program.
There they learn about the Florida aquifer and partake in hands-on activities in the classroom and on the long boardwalk that stretches to the banks of the Pithlachascotee River that runs to the Gulf of Mexico. With COVID restrictions in place for the 2020-2021 school year, instructors took to the road to bring the program to schools.
Other programs, such as the monthly astronomy night and Saturday afternoon Audubon Society educational programs, were scuttled. (Though the Saturday morning bird walks continued).
Now things are livening up as summer camps get going, the county libraries host storytime events at the park and the general programs gain interest as more people head out to parks and recreation centers amid the pandemic.
Night hikes, where attendees equipped with black lights search for glow-in-the-dark scorpions and millipedes, have been so popular that registrations fill up soon after the programs are announced. A coastal clean-up held in April at Anclote Gulf Park also filled up fast, Jenkins said, adding that arts and crafts type programs for the kids have drawn some good interest as well. An Earth Day drop-in recycling art activity at Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Park brought in 49 attendees, up from the 20-30 that attended previous events.
Check out the Pasco County Parks website and you’ll see that Pasco has over 40 parks and recreational areas – from coastal locations, such as Key Vista Nature Park, Anclote River Park in Holiday, Robert K. Rees Park in New Port Richey, to the Withlacoochee River Park in Dade City and Aripeka Sandhill Preserve in Hudson.
That’s a lot of land to cover, but Jenkins says she is up for it.
“I grew up really outdoors – fishing, camping hiking,” said Jenkins, who spent some good times at Rock Springs Run at Kelly Park in Apopka as a kid and teenager.
Camping and hiking adventures in Florida and Georgia stuck with her. Jenkins went on to study nature and graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she trekked to Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park in search of the bison and wild horses that roam the 23,000-acre park.
“It took me three years to find the bison,” she said with a smile. “But I did it before I graduated and got to see them twice in five years.”
Jenkins also had volunteer stints caring for juvenile alligators at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission facility in Gainesville, and assisted in checking drift fences throughout the Ocala National Forest for amphibians and reptiles for the US Forest Service in conjunction with the University of Florida.
After graduating, Jenkins worked as a zoo teacher in the education program at the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Sanford, Florida.
When she recently became engaged to get married, she applied for jobs on Florida’s west coast where her fiancé resides.
“I applied for anything and everything,” she said adding that she’s delighted to have landed in Pasco County where the park system is bountiful and unique.
“All the parks here have different aspects that are appealing to nature lovers,” Jenkins said, noting options offered just at Starkey. “There’s hiking, the bike trail, the mountain bike trail, camping, horseback riding.”
Part of Jenkins’s job is to get people out to the parks to enjoy those activities. It’s a delicate melding of administrative, promotional, and fieldwork.
For the naturalist, stewardship is a priority – one that might just get easier by educating those you entice in.
One future goal is to offer educational programs for homeschool students, Jenkins said. She’s planning archery and kayak programs, something Jenkins is eager to do after having received her certifications.
Another is to simply get the word out about lesser-known parks, such as Withlacoochee River Park in Dade City.
“The fish camps do pretty well there,” she said, noting that the east Pasco park also got a little attention recently as the site of the Bay Area Renaissance Fair.
Sometimes all it takes is a simple visit to a place you’ve never been before.
Take a hike under the tall oaks or along the coastline. Make an encounter with a gopher tortoise, catch a sight of deer hiding in the hammock; learn how to shoot a bow and arrow or kayak along the mangroves, and it might just be a place you’ll want to come back to.
Check out the calendar of outdoor and park events
PHOTO | MICHELE MILLER
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