Micco Scrub Sanctuary — Micco, Florida

Micco Scrub Sanctuary covers 1,322 acres in Brevard County's Environmentally Endangered Lands system, with its entrance at 500 Micco Road (county sanctuary page).

The two agency listings disagree on the mailing line. Brevard County, which manages Micco Scrub, puts the entrance in Palm Bay's 32909 ZIP code (Brevard County); FWC instead files it under Micco and ZIP 32976 (FWC). Both give the same street address, 500 Micco Road, and the FWC listing says an entrance kiosk stocks trail maps.

Acreage differs too. Brevard County's figure of 1,322 acres equals the Micco Scrub tract added to the state project boundary on March 9, 1994 (FDEP, page 3). FWC lists a larger 1,736 acres for Micco Scrub, which appears nowhere on the county listing, so this page leads with the managing agency's number.

Hours come in two versions as well. Brevard County limits Micco Scrub to daytime use seven days a week, and the FWC listing posts daily hours of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The county page gives no opening or closing clock times for the Micco Road gate beyond day use, and as the managing agency's listing it is the one this page follows.

Micco Scrub has two marked loops: the red loop runs 3 miles with the strongest birding and scant shade, and the white loop runs 1.5 miles under partial shade with mostly pine-dependent birds (FWC trail listing).

According to FWC, the Micco Scrub paths carry clear markings, yet stretches of them can go under water following heavy rain, and walkers are told to come prepared with plenty of water and sun protection (FWC). Standing water belongs to the landscape here: Brevard County calls Micco Scrub a mosaic of seasonal marshes and dry flatwoods (Brevard County).

Brevard County publishes a 2025 Micco Scrub Sanctuary Trail Map as a PDF on the sanctuary page, and says the long trails running through Micco Scrub give hikers many chances to spot wildlife (county sanctuary page). The county lists biking and equestrian use as activities on the same page, so hikers, cyclists and riders can all use Micco Scrub.

Facilities at the Micco Road entrance are basic. The FWC listing marks parking as available but shows no accessible parking, no restroom and no accessible restroom, and it names horseback riding and a paddling launch as other site amenities without saying where on the 1,322 acres the launch sits (FWC trail listing). The Micco Scrub listing also names no drinking water among its amenities.

Gopher Tortoises, Hairy Woodpeckers, Great Horned Owls and Florida Scrub-Jays live in the high-quality flatwoods and scrub of Micco Scrub, according to the FWC listing for the Micco Road sanctuary (FWC).

Water shapes where the birds gather at Micco Scrub. The FWC listing says marshes and bay swamps dot the eastern and northern portions of the sanctuary and give feeding areas to Green-winged Teal, Northern Shovelers and Wood Ducks, along with Yellow-crowned Night-Herons, Wood Storks and Snowy Egrets.

The rarest bird on the Micco Scrub list is a visitor. Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, only a handful, have turned up foraging along the sanctuary's southern edge, FWC reports, while migrants such as Louisiana Waterthrush, Blackpoll Warbler and Painted Bunting have visited the small patches of oak hammock in spring and fall (FWC trail listing).

Brevard County frames the Micco Scrub flatwoods as shelter for native plants and animals found nowhere else in the county, and calls the tract part of Brevard's remaining mesic and scrubby flatwoods (Brevard County).

Micco Scrub welcomes hikers, cyclists, riders, geocachers and wildlife watchers but bans pets, smoking, alcohol, motor vehicles and hunting, under the visitor rules on the county's sanctuary listing (county sanctuary page).

The same Micco Scrub rules ask people to keep to the marked path, both for their own safety and to protect the land, bar removing plants, animals, or archaeological or cultural resources, and forbid feeding, disturbing or harming wildlife. Because pets are banned outright, dog walkers cannot use the Micco Road loops.

Riders at Micco Scrub answer to the county ordinance too. Chapter 78 of the county code treats EEL sites as department managed lands, describing them as irreplaceable, environmentally unique land at risk of extirpation in the county (county parks ordinance). Under section 78-113, a horse may use such land only on roads and designated bridle paths, and nobody may ride there between dark and daylight without a department permit. Section 78-122 adds that no one may sleep, camp or leave a vehicle parked overnight on department managed lands outside designated areas or without a permit; the county lists Micco Scrub for day use only.

Last verified: October 12, 2026, on the Brevard County website (Micco Scrub Sanctuary page).

Micco Scrub entered state conservation planning on March 9, 1994, when a 1,322-acre Micco Scrub tract won approval as a project addition, with Brevard County as sponsor and later buyer (FDEP 2026 Florida Forever plan, page 3).

FDEP's project history says the 1994 Micco Scrub tract belonged to a single owner, Kentucky Central Life Ins. Co., and carried a taxable value of $1,500,120. Brevard County's sanctuary listing adds that Micco Scrub was bought in partnership with the State of Florida (Brevard County).

Plans to grow the Micco Scrub area followed. In 1996 the Land Acquisition Advisory Council combined the Brevard Coastal Scrub Ecosystem Initiative with the Scrub Jay Refugia project, and the Initiative's six sites included a Micco Expansion of 1,833 acres (FDEP, page 3). In December 2000 the Acquisition and Restoration Council approved a larger addition that included a Valkaria/Micco Expansion of 4,144.48 acres in one category and 4,739.48 acres in another, and in April 2002 a further 50 acres of Valkaria/Micco Expansion were added (FDEP, page 4).

Not all of the expansion land stayed in the plan. On December 11, 2009, the council removed 1,667 acres within the Malabar Expansion and the Valkaria/Micco Expansion from the project boundary at the landowners' request, according to FDEP (FDEP, page 5). Today the plan assigns the Valkaria/Micco Expansion Site, added in 2002, to Brevard County to manage, together with the original six sites (FDEP, page 6).

Brevard County protects scrub like Micco Scrub because its scrub habitats support some of the largest Florida Scrub-Jay populations left in the state, according to the county EEL Program (county scrub education page).

The EEL Program's own figures show how much has been lost around Micco Scrub. The county estimates a 70 percent reduction in scrub habitat and an 87 percent decline in Florida Scrub-Jays on the Brevard County mainland between 1940 and 1999, a period in which the county's population rose an estimated 2,786 percent (county scrub education page). The remaining scrub parcels are highly fragmented, and the county says long-term fire suppression has left many of them as poor habitat.

The state gives the same reason for buying land at Micco. FDEP writes that the project exists to protect some of the best scrub fragments in the county, aiding the survival of the state-threatened Florida scrub-jay, and to give people places to learn about that landscape (FDEP, page 1). Micco Scrub, with its marked loops on Micco Road, is one of the places where that public access happens.