Locations...

Zander Medical Supplies, Inc. and Zander IVF, Inc. are located at 755 8th. CT., Vero Beach, Florida. This facility houses our customer service, sales, and equipment maintenance/repair staff.

Our hours of operation are from 8:00 AM until 6:00 PM five days per week. Due to the nature of our business, we strive to answer all customer inquiries in a timely fashion. Our established customers have access to their service representatives via cell phone 24 x7 for emergency service/orders.

If you are in the Vero Beach are, we welcome you to visit our facilities.

Early History Vero Beach Area

About ten thousand years ago, the Indian River Lagoon formed along the east central coast of Florida. The Native "Ais" Indians occupied the area that is now the refuge for thousands of years. The arrival of American settlers increased in the mid-1800's, as a result of improved steamboat and rail transportation.

Settlement also brought greater attention to the thriving bird rookeries in and around the lagoon. By the late 19th Century, an expanding market for bird feathers for the fashion industry resulted in the slaughter of beautiful herons, egrets, spoonbills and pelicans, at one point, plume feathers were worth more than gold. In 1858, Dr. Henry Bryant witnessed the slaughter of sixty spoonbills a day on Pelican Island. But the last of Pelican Island's birds was about to
be saved by the arrival of a concerned German immigrant.

An Immigrant and a President:
How Pelican Island became America's first wildlife refuge.

Paul Kroegel, a German immigrant, arrived in Sebastian, Florida in 1881, and homesteaded with his father on an ancient shell midden on the west bank of the Indian River Lagoon. From is home Kroegel would look out to Pelican Island, a five-acre mangrove island where thousands of brown pelicans and other water birds would roost and nest. He took an interest in protecting the island's birds. Without state or federal laws to protect the birds, Kroegel would sail out to Pelican Island with his gun and stand guard.

Kroegel was visited by many influential naturalists who stayed at the nearby Oak Lodge from the 1880s to the early 1900s. One of those naturalists was a well-known ornithologist, Frank Chapman, who was curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a member of the American Ornithologist's Union. Chapman discovered that Pelican Island was the last rookery from brown pelicans on the East Coast of Florida, and pledged his support to protect the birds.

In 1901, the American Ornithologist's Union and the Florida Audubon Society led a successful campaign to pass legislation in Florida calling for the protection of non-game birds. Kroegel was one of four wardens hired by the Florida Audubon Society to protect water birds from market hunters. Two of those wardens were murdered in the line of duty.

Chapman and his fellow bird protection advocate, William Dutcher, knew that protecting the birds of Pelican Island required additional protection. Chapman and Dutcher were acquainted with President Theodore Roosevelt, who had assumed the Presidency in 1901. They visited Roosevelt at his home in Sagamore Hill, New York, and appealed to his strong conservation
ethic. (Read about Theodore Roosevelt's conservation legacy at theodoreroosevelt.org.)

On March 14, 1903, without fanfare, President Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing Pelican Island as the first federal bird reservation. He would establish a network of 55 bird reservation and national game preserved for wildlife - the forerunner to the national wildlife refuge system. But Pelican Island was the first time that the federal government set aside land for the sake of wildlife.

Paul Kroegel was hired as the first national wildlife refuge manager. He was paid $1 a month by the Florida Audubon Society, as Congress had not set aside funds for this executively created refuge.