Shoreline Trail To Honor Crabber Gus Muench

RUSKIN, FL — A trail at Cockroach Bay Preserve will bear the name of local crab fisherman Gus Muench, an avid supporter of efforts to preserve Hillsborough County's natural lands.

Read about how this Ruskin area crabber helped launch ELAPP,

The Hillsborough County Commission has directed its staff to develop and dedicate the passive trail in honor of Muench. Commissioners requested signage, an informational plaque and native vegetation along the trail, which will lead to a pavilion atop Cockroach Bay Mound.

The preserve is near Ruskin, along the southeastern shore of Tampa Bay.

Muench is credited with helping to launch Hillsborough County's Jan K. Platt Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program (ELAPP).

His efforts in the mid-1980s, including his call to buy an island piled high with discarded shells and artifacts by Native Americans, played a key role in the creation of ELAPP.

In letters to the media, he made a case for purchasing the Uzita tribe's uninhabited, centuries-old mound near Cockroach Bay. The requests and subsequent newspaper editorials inspired then-Hillsborough County Commissioner Platt to propose buying sensitive habitat throughout the county.

In a 1987 referendum, voters supported taxing themselves to raise money to buy such lands. Similar referendums passed in 1990 and 2008, expanding the program.

Now, 30 years after acquisition of the first site, ELAPP has amassed more than 61,000 acres of county lands deemed environmentally significant. The program is fulfilling its mission to preserve forests, wetlands and other natural lands in one of Florida's most rapidly developing counties.

Environmental advocates have chronicled the program's genesis and accomplishments in the ELAPP History Project. The website has interactive, then-and-now aerial maps of Hillsborough County; historic photographs, and interviews with key contributors such as Platt, former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez and Muench.

Muench still lives in the house he built 50 years ago beside the Little Manatee River. He pulls traps most days - he keeps about 250 of them in the water - and runs tours, Gus' Crabby Adventures, for residents and visitors who want to "experience what I experience," he said.