HERALD TRIBUNE (Sarasota, Florida) 25 September 09 Hopes rescurrected for threatened species (Eric Ernst)

For years, we allowed gopher tortoises to be buried alive if site developers paid a fee.

The strategy to allow so-called "takings" may have saved money, time and effort, but it never made much sense. If the tortoise is such a valuable species that we create a whole system of regulations to protect it, why would we throw it all out the window as soon as someone waves cash in the air?

Apparently, the approach has not worked.

In Florida, the tortoise's status has degenerated from a "species of special concern" to "threatened."

Fortunately, that also brought new rules, published last year by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. Now, the tortoises -- which inhabit the same dry upland favored by developers -- cannot be killed to make way for construction; they have to be relocated.

The rules are a work in progress, and haven't attracted much attention, probably because of the building slowdown.

While conservationists take heart from the reforms, rest assured plenty of concessions will remain for those who see the tortoises as merely an impediment to the next shopping mall.

For instance, in an extreme case a Wal-Mart parking lot could surround a burrow, providing that a radius of 25 feet from the hole is left untouched. That hardly recognizes the animal's natural range, which can cover miles.

Also, if conditions do not enable developers to relocate tortoises on-site, they need another place to put them. When construction picks up, there may not be enough receiving locations locally or even statewide.

Those are problems, but not insurmountable ones.

On the positive side, Florida now requires tortoise surveyors and handlers to take a four-day training class. Wildlands Conservation, a Venice environmental consulting firm, ran one this week at Shamrock Park and Nature Center.

Not only do the classes improve the odds for more accurate counts of gopher tortoises on building sites, they introduce trainees to researchers such as Ray Ashton, who describes himself as the Jane Goodall of gopher tortoises.

Ashton and his wife, Patricia, operate the 100-acre Ashton Biological Preserve near Gainesville, and much of what we know about tortoise behavior has come from their work.

In his part of the lectures this week, Ray Ashton reminded students why they should care about the animal's survival. As many as 400 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and spiders have been found in gopher tortoise burrows.

This qualifies the tortoise as a keystone species, important to the biodiversity of its habitat. Without the gopher tortoise, whole wildlife communities could collapse.

Even if we're arrogant enough to think we would not suffer materially from that, our enjoyment of the world around us would surely suffer.

That would be the short-term result.

Long-term, we really don't know.

And that's as good a reason as any to proceed cautiously.
Hopes rescurrected for threatened species

[ Hide Replies ]

• FL Press: Hopes rescurrected for specie - W von Papineäu, Sun Oct 11 00:42:04 2009