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Nature's landlord on burrowed time
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Location: Blogs Now We're Talking |
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| Posted by: Joe Byrnes |
2/22/2007 4:19 PM |
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on Friday announced a draft management plan to protect the state's gopher tortoises.
They are, ironically, the housing developers of natural Florida, building 15-foot-long, underground, temperature-controlled burrows for themselves and about 360 other native species. That's where the gopher frog lives, the eastern indigo snake, the Florida pine snake and the Florida mouse.
Florida still has perhaps 750,000 of the lumbering little tortoises, the long-living, late-mating, leaf-chomping landlords of upland forests. But their numbers have declined 60 to 80 percent in the past century.
The biggest concern is "habitat destruction, fragmentation, and degradation," according to the FWC.
Our sprawling cities, housing developments, farms and mines - the same kinds of human progress that, for other reasons, imperil the freshwater springs - are burying the gopher tortoise.
Sometimes literally.
The FWC plans to change that with stepped-up habitat conservation, teamwork with local governments, careful restocking, new management practices, better law enforcement, revised permitting and mitigation fees, and an end to the bulldozing of tortoises.
Read the draft at myfwc.com and e-mail your comments to gt_plan@myfwc.com by April 4.
The goal is to slow the tortoise's decline as Florida grows. The state should act quickly to protect and manage habitat for this key species.
Slow and steady won't win this race, because you can bet Florida's headlong development isn't going to stop for a nap.
Joe Byrnes may be reached at joe@ocala.com or (352) 867-4112.
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