How to preserve paradise: buy it!
May 3, 2015 -- The Bailey Tract on Tarpon Bay Road is a wonderland owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), who generously allows the public to visit it. It is part of the J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge properties on Sanibel Island. People are fortunate that FWS allows them to park and visit, because wildlife refuges usually are just that: refuges for wildlife – a place for wildlife to be able to avoid humans. In a fact sheet available on the FWS web site, the fact that this Bailey Tract was once owned by the Bailey family is stated right up front, at the beginning. The tract’s 100 acres is just a small portion of what the Bailey family once owned on Sanibel, but they still do own plenty – including the shopping center at Tarpon Bay Road and Periwinkle Way – smack in the middle of Sanibel’s “downtown.” They also owned a commercially zoned parcel across Tarpon Bay Road from the shopping center. That piece was sold to Tarpon Bay R...