Lifelong Collier County resident Mike Cox shares how he gives back to his hometown through his role as the Garden’s Natural Resources Manager.
Here’s a typical day at my job: It’s 80-plus degrees at 7 in the morning, and I’m out with a chainsaw clearing vegetation for a firebreak. It’s muggy. It’s muddy. The air is full of bugs. My personal protective equipment is stifling. The saws are loud, and there’s dust flying everywhere. I love it.
I joined the Garden’s Conservation Team almost two years ago, an unexpected opportunity to restore the land and give it back to my hometown community.
I grew up in Golden Gate Estates, and that’s where I found my passion for the outdoors. I’m an only kid. The closest thing I had to siblings were the kids on my street. All we did was play outside. We were one of the last generations without screens, one of the last to come home when the streetlamps came on. I feel very fortunate to be part of that generation.
My friends and I had a motto: Winter is for the woods, and summer is for the beach. I still live my life that way.
I’ve always been fascinated with plants and animals. As far back as I can remember, I knew everything had a place and purpose. Bees have a spot. Snakes have a spot. Slash pines, palm trees, alligators, panthers, and bears all have a spot. Even poison ivy and mosquitos have a spot. I was really lucky to have great influences like my dad, my Scoutmaster Chris Lombardo, and former Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park biologist Mike Owen, who all taught me how unique and special this place is.
As a kid, I was fascinated with television wildlife stars like Steve Irwin and Jack Hanna. So that’s what I was doing out in the woods, being a little Steve Irwin with my magnifying glass and my plant and animal ID books. I wasn’t isolated, but I just wasn’t on the same plane as the other kids because they were less into that stuff. That’s all I wanted to do.
Golden Gate Estates was much more rural then. I remember when they made Golden Gate Boulevard two lanes and when they made it four. I didn’t really realize it at the time, but that’s when our environment started to change.
You don’t see anywhere near the amount of wildlife you used to. I remember seeing bats in the mornings walking to the bus stop. Spotted skunks would set up shop in our garage and occasionally nuke our dogs. It was no big deal to spot a 400-pound bear in your backyard when you were getting ready for school. I still live in Golden Gate Estates. What I see now is development, development, development.
Before I joined the Garden, I was a boat captain. Hurricane Ian rolled through, and the company I worked for was destroyed overnight. For the first time in a long time, I was terrified. I took a part-time position at Johnsonville Night Lights in the Garden so that I had my days available to put out my résumé. Turns out, I didn’t have to look very far. A position here opened up, and the Garden took me on.
I’ve worked in a lot of industries, but this is the best job I ever had. There’s nothing about this job I don’t like—even those sweaty days clearing firebreaks. I think maybe I was meant to be here all along, that my fascination with nature, my years in Scouting, and my parents’ decision to settle in the Estates led me to where I am today.
I get to do some amazing things here at the Garden. I look for, treat, and remove invasive plant species. I pilot the boat with our team to places like Keewaydin Island for beach restoration work. After watching our beaches get ripped away by Hurricane Ian, being able to help them heal is really cool. I’m watching wildlife again, like the gopher tortoises on our 90-acre Preserve, but this time I’m paid for it!
Assisting with prescribed burns is especially meaningful. In addition to conducting them at the Garden, we help with burns in places like Picayune Strand, which is on the border of Golden Gate Estates. My parents on more than one occasion have had wildfire encroach on their home and property. By holding prescribed burns, we reduce pine needles, leaves, and other debris that can cause wildfires to spread out of control and threaten neighborhoods like mine. Being able to help the community in this way means the world to me.
Being from Collier County makes me even more driven to do these things. There’s a passion and a love for this place that only someone from here can have. The effort we put in is always 100% because it’s our community. It’s not just our community—it’s our parents’ community, our kids’ community, it’s your community. I’m proud to be able to conserve, restore, and protect our land so that future generations can learn to love it as much as I do.
This article originally appeared in the 2024 issue of Conserve.
