Indian River County and Pelican Island Audubon are appealing the decision by St. Johns River Water Management District to trade away Sand Lakes, purchased with Preservation 2000 funds, to settle a dispute with a property owner.

Sand Lakes is an environmental jewel and using it for compensation, not conservation, is unconscionable.

A report by the district’s environmental staff evaluated 29 areas in the St. Johns Upper Basin and found Sand Lakes, a link in a designated wildlife corridor, contains 10 of 13 habitats and could support 149 of 163 endangered and threatened species. If size were not a consideration, and larger areas can support larger populations, Sand Lakes would have outranked top-placed Lake Poinsettia/Canaveral.

The district dismisses the wildlife corridor as a concern because officials “don’t think it will happen.” Yet it was their own prior action, the surplus and trade of Berry Groves, that caused much of this problem.

Berry Groves had connected both Sand Lakes and another property to the Blue Cypress Water Management Area. The district has never asserted that the land it would acquire was necessary for operations, only that this package deal would allow it to operate free from threat of a lawsuit.

If landowners have been harmed, they deserve compensation. But giving away prime conservation lands is not the appropriate means.

Preservation 2000 was a conservation program — not a legal defense fund. Visit pelicanislandaudubon.org for more information, then contact Gov. Charlie Crist (charlie.crist@myflorida.com) to urge him to overturn this betrayal of public trust.

Don’t let Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever become Florida for Awhile.

Katherine Wegel
November 4, 2007

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