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Comprehensive Plan Conservation Element Reptiles found in association with freshwater marshes and ponds include salamanders, sirens, and a variety of frogs, turtles, snakes and the American alligator. Sloughs Sloughs are wetlands that generally appear as open expanses of grasses, sedges, and rushes in an area where the soil is saturated during the rainy season. Most sloughs are relatively long and narrow and slightly lower in elevation than surrounding flatwoods or hammocks. Grasses are the most common plants found in sloughs. Sedges and rushes also occur, with beak rushes, maidencane, bottle brush threeawn, bluepoint panicum, soft rush, sand cordgrass, sundew, marsh pink, milkwort, yellow -eyed grass, meadow beauty, slough grass and low panicum. The Soil Survey of Indian River County identifies four "map units" (soil associations) in Indian River County where sloughs and poorly defined drainageways occur. The four associations/units are Riviera-Pineda-Wabasso, Winder -Riviera Manatee, Boca-Wabasso-Riviera, and Myakka-Holopaw- Pompano. Generally, the soils of sloughs are classified as nearly level and "poorly" to "very poorly" drained. These soil associations are generally found in the central and eastern third of Indian River County. They extend from Brevard County to St. Lucie County and also extend east of the Atlantic Coastal Sand Ridge and are adjacent to the tidal marshes on the coastal mainland. Another area of these soils is immediately west of the St. Johns Marsh, extending from Brevard County to Okeechobee County. Sloughs are host to a diverse wildlife population. Where sloughs join flatwoods and hammocks, large animals occur. The plants associated with sloughs provide food for such mammals and birds as bobwhite quail, deer, and wading birds. While the low growing vegetation of sloughs provides poor cover for most wildlife species, this is often offset by the "edge effect" of adjacent flatwoods and hammocks. Other animals characteristic of the sloughs community include bobcat, gray fox, marsh rabbit, cranes, egrets, herons, eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, and a variety of frogs and salamanders. In combination with other ecological community types, sloughs play an important role for species, such as the endangered Florida panther, whose range encompasses a multitude of communities. From the standpoint of flood control, sloughs serve as natural drainageways during high water periods. As such, they have great value in improving water quality by natural processes. Fire and artificial water level fluctuations are the major factors affecting these areas, with variations in the natural sequences of either event changing the slough's diversity and productively. With exclusion of fire or permanent water level reduction, the plant succession would be to a wooded community. Community Development Department Indian River County 53