HOBE SOUND, Fla. — Standing 86 feet above sea level atop Hobe Mountain at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Benji Studt points his camera to the east to capture everything he loves about this slice of wild Florida.
Hobe Mountain is the highest point in south Florida and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, Jupiter Island, Indian River Lagoon and the coastal dunes.
“When you are looking through the viewfinder, it’s hard to even talk,” said Studt, a conservation biologist. “I am amazed at the beauty of this place.”
Jonathan Dickinson State Park is home to 16 natural communities that spread across 10,000 acres and its home to 150 species of birds, including the federally-threatened Florida Scrub-Jay.
Audubon Florida estimates 130 Scrub-Jays reside in the park.
“It’s Florida's only endemic bird, meaning it only occurs here and nowhere else in the world,” Studt said. “In my career, I have seen these birds get extirpated from 30 miles south of here and now this is the southern most population of these birds.”
Studt took WPTV’s Joe Fisher deep inside the park to showcase the diverse ecosystem that exists along the desert-like sandy patches of the scrub.
The Old-Growth Pine, he said, provides protection for the endangered Red-Cockaded Woodpecker that park rangers successfully reintroduced into the park.
“Just by those species being here tells us this land is incredibly productive, it is incredibly pristine,” he said.
Studt is in opposition of Florida’s Great Outdoors Initiative that proposed building three golf courses at Jonathan Dickinson State Park. The plan has since been withdrawn after intense disapproval of the plan.
“I just imagine all of these rolling hills suddenly with irrigation lines and pumps installed all throughout them and golf cart paths,” Studt said. “It hits me. It hurts me.”
Dawn Donaldson, who lives down the street from the park entrance, protested against any future development in the park.
“I bring everyone I love here to experience real Florida,” Donaldson said. “I enjoy the wildlife that comes into my yard from the park. We have foxes. I had a bobcat drinking out of my bird feeder.”
At 86 feet high, the community said it wants to send a message that south Florida’s highest hill is one worthy dying on.
“We can’t lose this,” said Donaldson. “There are not a lot of places like this left.”
