Petition asks Lakeland to reconsider Christmas Parade route around Lake Morton
Sally Bendele isn’t looking to rain on anyone’s parade, but she and others hope to throw up a detour sign.
Bendele is concerned that a planned one-time change in the route of the Lakeland Christmas Parade could disturb the city’s beloved swans and other animals at Lake Morton. The same day that Bendele saw a post on Lakeland’s Facebook page about the changed route, she and her partner, Sydney Milton, created a petition on Change.org asking the city to divert the parade from Lake Morton.
The petition, titled “Safeguarding Wildlife: Change the Route of Lakeland Christmas Parade!”, had gained 235 signatures as of Friday.
“My main concern is they're just not really used to all this noise, and it's just thousands of people,” said Bendele, 24. “It just feels like it would be pretty overwhelming for all the swans and the ducks. They just don't experience that kind of environment every day.”
The parade normally winds around Lake Mirror after starting at the RP Funding Center. City officials announced earlier this month that this year’s 42nd annual parade will follow a different course, one that includes a loop around Lake Morton.
Under the customary route, parade traffic proceeds east on Orange Street and then turns north on Massachusetts Avenue before circling around Lake Mirror. But roadwork related to the construction of an apartment complex has a section of Orange Avenue temporarily closed.
So city officials decided that the parade will instead turn south on Massachusetts and left at the Chamber of Commerce building to follow Lake Morton Drive before exiting on East Walnut Street.
The parade typically includes about 100 entrants, including floats, firetrucks, police cars and marching bands. It draws an estimated audience of 40,000 or more, scattered along the 1.25-mile parade route.
Lake Morton is home to the city-owned flock of 50 flightless swans, birds that have become the symbol of the city, as well as non-native geese and Muscovy ducks.
The lake and its shorelines also provide habitat for a range of native wildlife, including wood storks, great blue herons, great egrets, green herons, white ibis, wood ducks, ring-necked ducks, limpkins, moorhens, purple gallinules and American coots. Wood storks are federally listed as a threatened species.
Bald eagles often hunt at Lake Morton. Dozens of American white pelicans spent winters on the lake, and such birds as ruddy ducks and lesser scaups are sometimes seen.
Lake Mirror is also home to both native and non-native birds, but in smaller populations. The roads around Lake Mirror don’t come as close to the water as Lake Morton Drive does at its namesake lake.
Bendele grew up in a house near Lake Morton and described it as “a really nostalgic place for me.” She said she was stunned to learn that this year’s Christmas Parade would circumnavigate the lake.
“Like, my jaw dropped,” she said. “I just couldn't believe that decision was made. And I know that maybe options are limited for parade routes and stuff, but I just feel like with the reputation of the swans, specifically – I feel like when you think of Lakeland, swans are definitely something that comes to mind. And, yeah, I was just pretty jarred at that and I immediately told my partner and I got their opinion on it. And they were equally as frustrated as me.”
Bob Donahay, Lakeland’s Director of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts, said the city’s staff is determined to reduce the parade’s impact on Lake Morton’s animal population as much as possible. Spectators will be barred from sitting or standing on the lake side of Lake Morton Drive, he said.
“We fully intend to have people out there, staff on hand, to protect the swans,” Donahay said. “People have to remember, too, it's just like, if we had a hurricane hit here tomorrow, we don't gather up the swans. We leave them on the lake. When adversity hits or whatever, all they do is swim out to the middle of the lake and get away from everything. So the swans are a lot more self-sufficient than you think.”
Dr. Price Dickson, a veterinarian with My Pet’s Animal Hospital, led the annual medical examinations of the Lake Morton swans this week after the birds were collected in nets and held in fenced pens for a day. Dickson said she was less concerned about the effect of the parade’s noise and commotion than about another likely effect — trash.
“I've had to pull plastic netting out of these guys that they've tried to eat,” Dickson said. “And unfortunately, with things like the parade, people throw beads, people leave their garbage around, and I really worry about it blowing in the lake and somebody eating it. So that's what I worry the most about, honestly.”
She added: “The noise and commotion they get over. I mean, the Fourth of July is every year (with fireworks downtown). They're smart enough to just go out on the water and wait it out. So, an evening of noise and commotion, they can withstand. Eating somebody's plastic trash, they can't.”
Donahay said the city plans to have employees collect trash around Lake Morton soon after the parade passes.
“When we do our cleanup of the parade, we’re going to specifically start in that area first to make sure we can address that as quickly as possible, not only for the neighborhood but also for the swans,” he said.
Reinier Munguia, President of Lake Region Audubon Society, said he didn’t expect the parade to have much effect on wildlife at Lake Morton. He said the birds are accustomed to regular vehicle traffic on Lake Morton Drive.
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“The problem is not the parade but the people that come to the event,” Munguia said.
Rayne Cole, a friend of Bendele and Milton, signed the petition as soon as she learned about it. Cole, a Lakeland native, said she often visited Lake Morton with her mother as a child to feed the ducks.
“I just don't think it's fair because there's a lot of wildlife in the area, and they're sensitive to the noises and the pollution, and big crowds like that bring trash and people don't always clean up after themselves," said Cole, 24. "We've seen it throughout the years at parades and the after-effects and stuff.”
A few of those signing the petition added comments.
“We clean that lake every month and we don’t need any more trash there!” one person wrote.
“The safety of wildlife deserves to be prioritized over a parade,” another wrote. “One would think this is obvious, but humans are often full of surprises.”
Donahay emphasized that the parade will return to its route around Lake Mirror next year.
“It’s going to be a big undertaking, and we realized that it's a one-and-done,” he said. “This is not going to be permanent. We know it’s just for one year, temporary. We wanted to do something different that had never been done in Lakeland before. And we fully intend to staff appropriately to protect the swans in that area.”
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Petition asks Lakeland to move Christmas Parade route from Lake Morton
