2023 Little River Cleanup Photos
History Paddle – Sunday, March 3, 2024
Bring your Kayak and join Dade Heritage Trust and the Little River Conservancy for a paddle on the Little River learning about the history and historical hydrology of this ancient waterway. The historic Little River is amazingly beautiful and BIG! Learn about its environmental heritage and advocacy efforts to ensure its long-term health. Great Sunday morning on the water! Bring your own watercraft, no rentals on-site.
Put in is at NW 2nd and NW 86 Street, River Estates Park in the Village of El Portal. For more information, please reach out to Chris at DHT, chris@dadeheritagetrust.org or 305-910-3996.
Manatees in Miami Survey
Have you ever seen Manatees in the Little River or other Miami waterways? Do you want to help researchers at FIU study and protect these amazing creatures? Please take a 10 minute survey to aid them in their research and help our marine mammals! Anyone in Miami-Dade County can participate.
LRC receives Dade Heritage Trust Preservation Award
The Little River Conservancy was awarded a 2022 Preservation Award for our work to Educate about and Advocate for the Little River by Dade Heritage Trust at their annual meeting.
2022 Little River Cleanup Photos
2022 Little River Cleanup & Celebration
Neighbors along the Little River will come together to celebrate their community and help clean-up and discover one of Miami’s historic natural waterways. Please join us for the 2022 Little River Cleanup & Celebration!
April 2nd, 2022
LOCATION: 435 Northeast 82nd Street, Miami, FL 33138
SCHEDULE:
- 7:30am – 8:30am — 82nd street gate opens and organizers arrive, meet at launch site, sign in, clean-up materials distributed
- 8:30am — Launch watercraft for the clean-up
- 11:30am — Return, load trash into dumpster, clean up watercraft
- 12:00 – 1:15pm — Community lunch and talk on the history of the Little
River, current planning for sea level rise in the area, local archaeology,
hydrology, etc. (Lunch will be provided—all are welcome!)
Safety (including for COVID-19), what to bring, and lunch information.
Thanks to our partners!
2021 Little River Cleanup & Celebration Photos
Island Apple Snail laying eggs 
Egyptian Geese 
2021 Little River Cleanup & Celebration
Neighbors along the Little River will come together to celebrate their community and help clean-up and discover one of Miami’s historic natural waterways. Please join us for the 2021 Little River Cleanup & Celebration!
Safety (including for COVID–19), what to bring, and lunch information.
LOCATION: 435 Northeast 82nd Street, Miami, FL 33138
SCHEDULE:
- 7:30am – 8:30am — 82nd street gate opens and organizers arrive, meet at launch site, sign in, clean-up materials distributed
- 8:30am — Launch watercraft for the clean-up
- 11:30am — Return, load trash into dumpster, clean up watercraft
- 12:00 – 1:15pm — Community lunch and talk on the history of the Little
River, current planning for sea level rise in the area, local archaeology,
hydrology, etc. (Lunch will be provided—all are welcome!) - 1:15pm — Pelican Harbor Seabird Station new property tour
The Historical River
When south Florida was first settled—and up until the first canal drainage projects in the late 1920s—the only solid mainland was a narrow string of islands or keys between the Biscayne Bay and the Everglades on the Coastal Ridge.
Rand, McNally, and Co. 1884 (Bloomfields Illustrated Historic Guide) Library of Sandra Henderson Thurlow. via https://jacquithurlowlippisch.com/tag/old-maps/Before the drainage projects of the late 1920s and 1930s, the Everglades flowed south from lake Okeechobee, hemmed in by the coastal ridge on the east. Where breaks in the coastal ridge allowed water to pass to the sea, small rivers formed. Biscayne Bay has four of these original rivers.
The Transverse Glades became the Little River at about NE 1st Avenue: a trickle in the dry season and a torrent in the wet season. It was joined by a spring trace that was harnessed to power a coontie mill near Sherwood Forest Park. The river flowed past the Tequesta Indian mound, where there was a bubbling spring in the middle of the river, according to early plat maps of the area.
West of NE 2nd Avenue the Little River opened out into Everglades sawgrass prairie. The River was later dredged and the Transverse Glades drained to create the current channel. 
Water Quality Monitoring Project
About the Project
The Little River Conservancy has started a Citizen Science project on Experiment.com to improve water quality monitoring along the Little River. Nitrogen and phosphorus cause persistent algal blooms in the bay, but current monitoring of the waters feeding Biscayne Bay are insufficient. Two basins effecting seagrass loss will be targeted in this project, Little River and the Biscayne Canal. The goal is to expand the sensing network in an effort to help drive research, local decision making, and community action. All data will become open source.
What is the context of this research?
The August 2020 Fish kill hit Biscayne Bay, killing thousands of fish and hitting the ecosystem hard. I wanted to dig deeper but the data was insufficient.
We have known that nutrient pollution is slowly killing the bay since the 1970’s. Today water quality testing is also in the 1970’s, with monthly water quality tests of a dynamic system which sees changes every tide and rainfall event.
This consistent level of nutrient pollution has led to persistent algal blooms causing extreme seagrass die offs in Biscayne Bay.
New low cost sensor technology is making continual monitoring possible. These sensors allow the community to gain a deeper understanding of the current situation and direct action.
What is the significance of this project?
This project would be the first continual monitoring system of nutrient pollution and water quality measures for the waters entering Biscayne Bay. Continual monitoring creates a much more accurate data for a system where water moves continually especially with every tide and rainfall event.
This level of data is significant because it will help guide new research, social, and governmental action.
Currently, FIU has 4 sensors that test water quality continuously mainly focused on the bay itself. Adding more sensors to this network will give data to support the dynamic nature of the bay and its inflowing waterways.
These low cost sensors can dramatically increase the size of the network at 5-10% the traditional costs.
What are the goals of the project?
The goal of the project is to add a minimum of 3 sensors to the waters entering Biscayne Bay through the Little River and Biscayne Canals. The sensors will measure dissolved oxygen, temperature, salinity, nitrogen, phosphorus, and/or Chlorophyl A.
This project will generate a new stream of continual open data for citizens, communities, government, and scientists to take action, plan and execute long term projects, and more deeply understand how to care for our water ways.
When implemented this will support line 1B of the Biscayne Bay Task Force Report, which states: Develop, implement and continuously monitor and demonstrate progress toward meeting 1A’s pollutant load reduction goals and interim targets for surface and groundwater and linked biological recovery.