SUN-SENTINEL (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 18 August 06 State trying to stop developers from burying tortoises alive (David Fleshler )
The state wildlife agency took a step this week toward dismantling its heavily criticized gopher tortoise policy that had allowed thousands of the threatened animals to be buried alive in construction work.
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission announced Wednesday it will allow developers to relocate tortoises from construction sites without first testing them for upper respiratory tract disease, a bacterial illness often fatal to the reptiles.
The testing requirement had been called a key impediment to saving tortoises. Rather than test and relocate all tortoises found on a site, most developers chose the easier option of writing a check to the state to buy and protect tortoise habitat elsewhere, then sending in the bulldozers.
"The test as it was being used in the real world was not achieving the desired conservation benefit, but it was becoming a detriment," said Joan Berish, a commission biologist who has devoted years to the gopher tortoise. Since 1991, the state has issued permits to kill more than 74,000 tortoises in the course of construction, although biologists say it's likely some survived. While permit fees paid for the acquisition of 22,000 acres of tortoise habitat, the state's biologists have reported that the species was continuing to decline. And many people were horrified that the state would allow the animals to be buried alive, particularly since the tortoise's slow metabolism meant it could takes months for them to die.
While the commission remains concerned about upper respiratory tract disease, Berish said the test doesn't reveal whether a tortoise can spread the illness. Allowing tortoises that test positive to be killed may have the unintended consequence of eliminating those with the genes to resist the disease, she said.
Aside from their intrinsic value as a native Florida species, gopher tortoises play an important role in the state's ecology. Their burrows shelter hundreds of species, including the Florida mouse, gopher frog and eastern indigo snake.
The decision to end the testing requirement is part of a broader effort by the state to halt the decline of the gopher tortoise, which inhabits just the kind of dry, open land that attracts developers.
The commission voted in June to raise the gopher tortoise's status from "species of special concern" to "threatened." As part of that reclassification, the commission's staff is working on a management plan intended to find ways to raise the species' numbers. A major effort is underway to find vacant habitat that could receive tortoises trucked in from the sites of future developments.
The commission is working on two experimental sites in the Panhandle, where years ago people killed and ate most of the tortoises in many areas. The commission will devote considerable time to developing standards to make sure relocations are successful, said Berish, the commission biologist. In badly handled relocations, the tortoises wander off, get eaten by dogs or run over by cars.
"Nobody wants to see tortoises dumped," she said. "We want to do it right."
Despite the changes, it remains legal to kill tortoises. One recent permit will allow developer Parker Mynchenberg to kill an estimated 950 tortoises in the construction of the Plantation Oaks golf course community in Ormond Beach. He agreed to pay $722,897 in mitigation fees to protect other tortoise habitat, according to the commission.
He could not be reached for comment.
Although this permit has already been awarded, Berish said there's a chance many of those tortoises can be saved, particularly now that the testing requirement has been waived.
Steve Godley, a biological consultant who represents the Florida Home Builders Association, said the testing requirement "certainly did shoot down the option of relocation."
The commission's action "will provide developers with an option they didn't have before," he said.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-ctortoise17aug18,0,6394190.story?coll=sfla-news-palm&track=mostemailedlink
