WESH (Winter Park, Florida) 14 November 06 Groups Work To Relocate Tortoises Threatened By New Homes
Ponce Inlet, Fla.: Gopher tortoises in Florida may soon have their status changed to threatened, which would give them more protection.
But they are still in decline, falling to developers who can get a permit and destroy them. However, a new procedure gives developers new incentives to save the tortoises, WESH 2 News reported.
"Too often, gopher tortoises in this state are actually buried alive," said Jen Hobgood of the U.S. Humane Society. "They are entombed and they died a slow and inhumane death."
The developer who will put the cottages of Ponce Inlet on the site has hired a team to excavate the 17 gophers who live deep in the sand in long, narrow burrows. It is expensive and intricate work, but the payoff is that the tortoises will live.
Officials said it is not that developers are necessarily cruel people. They don't want to kill the gopher tortoises, but up until now, the process of paperwork and regulation cost them too much in time and money.
It was easier and legal to pull a permit and build right over them, crushing the burrows and suffocating and starving the tortoises. Now, however, the state has agreed to what is called a humane relocation.
"We can actually work with developers, at the last minute, when development is about to begin, to humanely relocate these animals so they don't have to suffer that kind of death," Hobgood said.
"There's no financial incentive to keeping them. It's is more of a personal, just all of us, everybody involved in the project, including the town, not wanting to kill the tortoises," said Andy Howe of Cranewoods Development.
Many burrows had beautiful, healthy gopher tortoises that will be relocated to a safe site because environmentalists said the state has made it easier for developers to do the right thing.
The tortoises will be relocated to the Florida Panhandle. But in the future, the state wants to relocate the animals to open land closer to home.
State officials said they do not want to deplete any counties' tortoise populations.
Groups Work To Relocate Tortoises Threatened By New Homes