Tortoises may slow state's rapid growth

BY JIM WAYMER
FLORIDA TODAY

Gopher tortoise. Listed as a species of special concern, some
environmentalists are pushing for an increase in protection for gopher
tortoises in Florida.

Whom to call
If you have concerns about tortoises being buried by construction in your
neighborhood, call the state wildlife hot line at (888) 404-3922.

Every year, bulldozers entomb thousands of gopher tortoises in their burrows
in Florida.

No one knows how many suffocate, starve or dehydrate under pavement and
foundations for new homes and businesses. Some claw their way out, while
others take months to perish. "They can die slowly," said Dot Carlson, an
Edgewater resident who recently fought to save tortoises there from being
buried under a Best Western. "Being a reptile, their metabolism is slow."

State wildlife officials call the practice of burying tortoises "incidental
take." Carlson and animal rights groups call it inhumane.

Now, a state proposal to upgrade the gopher tortoise's status from "species
of special concern" to "threatened" may force developers to stop burying so
many tortoises or to buy more space for them elsewhere. A similar request is
pending at the federal level.

By April, a panel of five biologists will review the gopher tortoises'
status in Florida.

If the status changes, state wildlife officials will have to decide what new
rules to impose on developers. What standards they'll set are hard to
predict because they're different for each current "threatened" species.

But saving more tortoises comes at a price, opponents say, one likely to
trickle down to homebuyers. The lesson of the Florida scrub jay shows how
"threatened" species can add heavily to construction costs, causing months
of delay or even derailing major projects.

"Millions of dollars have been spent to relocate gopher tortoises," said
Franck Kaiser, executive director of Brevard Home Builders and Contractors
Association.

He and other opponents of the proposed "up-listing" question why a
population of more than 700,000 gopher tortoises in Florida isn't
sufficient.

'They're in trouble'

Scientists who study the tortoise say the numbers -- when considered with
the threats -- support the more-protected state designation. If people keep
burying the tortoise, they say, long-term prospects aren't good.

Gopher tortoises take a long time to reach sexual maturity and lay only
about 10 eggs every few years. Statistically, only one of those eggs results
in a tortoise that survives longer than a year.

They face constant habitat loss from land clearing. And well-meaning people
who move them -- while attempting to save them -- can introduce fatally
diseased tortoises into healthy populations or release them in areas where
they face even greater dangers.

"They're in trouble," said Henry Mushinsky, a biologist at the University of
South Florida in Tampa and a member of the state's biological review panel.
"If they weren't a very, very long-lived animal, my guess is that most
places where they occur they would be gone."

Consider:

* In the past century, gopher tortoises lost 1.6 million acres of their
sandy habitat to development, an 85 percent decline in the 10.8 million
acres they once inhabited in Florida.
* Biologists predict gopher tortoises might be eliminated from private
lands within the next three generations.
* In the past 14 years, Florida permitted an estimated 67,000 to 71,000
"incidental takes" of gopher tortoises, which allow developers to build
among them, with unknown consequences.
* Beyond the tortoises buried, many more may die at the hands of
well-meaning people without permits. They put wayward tortoises in their
cars and drop them off at parks or ranches, where the creatures wander onto
roads again and get hit by cars.

Better protection

No matter what happens with the listing status, wildlife officials say they
plan to examine all options developers have to make up for killing tortoises
and destroying their habitat.

Now, in exchange for permission to bury live tortoises in their burrows,
developers must buy gopher tortoise habitat at about $7,600 an acre. The
rules require they buy up to 25 percent of the acreage they destroy, usually
in large conservation parks.

Few local governments have ordinances to keep the animal from being entombed
ormoved.

"There's no mechanism within the building process to ensure protection of
the gopher tortoise, or protected species in general," said Kwami Pennick,
code enforcement officer for Brevard's Natural Resource Management Office.

Despite the harshness of burying tortoises alive or destroying their homes,
state biologists say the current process brings in millions annually to
protect better habitat elsewhere.

In the past year, landowners paid $13.9 million to mitigate for 12,778
impacted gopher tortoises. That was nearly twice the previous year's dollar
amount and number of tortoises permitted to be killed.

Citizens watching

But a more-protected status and new rules won't matter much without better
enforcement, conservationists say.

They think some environmental consultants -- who are hired by developers to
count tortoises and determine impact -- are poorly trained and may have
incentives from the developers to find as few tortoises as possible.

As part of their species review, state wildlife officials plan to examine
ways to improve enforcement and training of consultants.

When rules and enforcement fail, the tortoises' fate often falls to people
like Maureen Parent in Titusville, who feel strongly enough to try to
protect them.

A few years ago, she and her neighbors debunked an environmental
consultant's claim that only four tortoises lived on the building site
behind her home. Parent and others counted 30 tortoises, forcing wildlife
officials to take another look.

"It seems like the incentive is for them to save money for the developers so
they'll get rehired," Parent said of environmental consultants.

People like Carlson -- who saved the tortoises at the Edgewater motel site
-- keep fighting for tortoise reform.

"It takes the average citizen, but it takes a lot out of us," she said. "I
don't accept 'so what' or 'that's just the way it is.' If in 1776 everybody
said that, then we'd all be British."

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