Paperboy Note: I fully realise that these are Sea Turtles and not usually the type with which you deal in this forum. However, the item does bring up some issues of choice and 'hard medicine' that do similarly affect other herp conservation efforts. respects, Wes
ORLANDO SENTINEL (Florida) 08 June 06 Beach repairs can kill turtles, save their lives (Mike Thomas)
Florida is going under.
The sea is rising, the beaches are retreating, the hurricanes are charging, the builders are building regardless of the above and the politicians are sticking their heads in the sand.
And to the rescue we have the hopper dredge.
It lowers its giant snout to the sea bottom. Impeller blades whir. Sand, silt and water are sucked up the tube into the cargo hold as the vacuum moves quickly along the sea bottom. When the ship is full and ready to bring that sand to shore, one of the crew sifts through a filter basket.
Oops. Turtle parts.
The vacuum sucked it up and the impeller chopped it up.
The dead-turtle quota has been met. Work stops immediately.
A Brevard project was halted last year after three turtle deaths. Work on a Panhandle beach was stopped last month after four turtles were killed.
Residents and community leaders were none too happy.
When it comes to saving endangered creatures, turtles may become the next great battleground species.
Florida maintains beaches like roads. They are paved with sand.
Sometimes a beach can last for years. Sometimes, during a hurricane, they only last for days. And so there is ever more urgency to pump sand.
At some distant point, the sheer hopelessness of this task will cause the program to collapse and Florida will become Holland, its mighty condos cowering behind dikes.
But that is the future and, since this is Florida, who cares?
Until then we will continue bulldozing dunes, building more condos and pumping every grain of sand possible to delay the consequences.
Enter the turtles.
The Army Corps of Engineers, our primary beach builder, is allowed by law to grind up only so many a year. It can kill a few dozen from the Gulf Coast and a few dozen more from the Southeast Atlantic Coast.
If too many are killed at one job, that threatens other jobs. For example, let's say the corps has five months left in the year and is allowed to kill only 10 more loggerhead turtles between North Carolina and Key West.
It still needs to dredge a shipping channel in Georgia and build a beach in Miami and Fort Lauderdale -- all potential turtle killers.
And suddenly two loggerheads are killed in Brevard. That job is shut down to save the others.
How much longer can this continue as coastal cities get desperate for sand, particularly with Hurricane Barry Bonds out there in the batter's box somewhere in the eastern Atlantic?
Yet, given the survival rate of baby turtles -- only one in thousands -- each adult is a precious commodity. And dredges are only one threat. Boat collisions and shrimp trawlers also take a toll. Ultimately, our vanishing shore may be their biggest undoing because that is where they nest.
Turtles may end up depending on our dredged beaches as much as the mayor of Miami Beach. While the hard-packed sand is a poor substitute for the real thing, it is better than swimming headfirst into a sea wall with a belly full of eggs.
And so the argument will be made that we must kill the turtles to save the turtles. It is a testament to how much we have destroyed this state that there actually may be some validity to it.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/orl-miket0806jun08,0,1743200.column?coll=orl-news-col
