On Friday the 13th of August, 2004, a nightmare named Hurricane Charley roared across the barrier islands of Sanibel and Captiva, with devastation of all the island vegetation in its wake. Two hundred year old mangrove forests were severely damaged or destroyed. Australian pines toppled like ten pins along Periwinkle Way and the shorelines. Other vegetation that formed the natural tree canopy was either lost or so badly damaged that it had to be removed.
As a community we felt an intense loss. Our canopy cathedral along Periwinkle Way helped define our islands as a tropical sanctuary, and in one calamitous afternoon, it was gone.
But adversity wears another face called opportunity. As devastating as Charley turned out to be, it has also presented us with a remarkable opportunity. The trees brought down by the hurricane were primarily invasive and non-native varieties, never meant to withstand the force of Category 4 winds. Hundreds of thousands of local and federal dollars have been expended for their clean-up and removal. Now we as a community have been given an essentially blank slate, to recreate and restore our tropical sanctuary even better than before.

 

Periwinkle Way, the cleanup after Charley