Regional Conservation Issues

On Saturday March 8 Florida Audubon's Regional Conservation Committee met at Brooker Creek Preserve. The 15 people present represented the Clearwater, Tampa, Hernando, Venice, Sarasota, St.Petersburg, and West Pasco chapters. The program began with a workshop led by Bruce Rinker, Director of Pinellas County Environmental Lands Division who was trained as a forest ecologist. Using the 8,000 acre Brooker Creek Preserve as an example he spoke about how we can become better stewards of our environmentally sensitive lands. Pinellas County is about 280 square miles in extent. 11% of the county is made up of parks (3% or 4,000 acres) and preserves (8% or 15,000 acres) which together have a real estate value of more than $2 billion. The function of the preserves is primarily ecological and only secondarily recreational. The parks function is primarily recreational and so the two divisions responsible for these lands have different missions. It is surprising how many people think that preserves should have ball parks and soccer fields. Environmental Lands has a staff of 34, more than 400 volunteers, 7 law enforcement officers, 2 non-profit Friends Groups, and a Wildlands Fire Team. He paid particular tribute to the work done by the volunteers. Land acquisition is carried out by the county offices responsible for budget and real estate. Apart from the 3 major preserves Brooker Creek, Shell Key, and Weedon Island,  the acreage is very fragmented. Some environmental management areas are as small as 8 acres. Conservation aims are directed at managing ecosystems rather than the species they contain. An exception is a focus on eradicating exotic species such as Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius) and air potato (Dioscorea bulbifera). Unfortunately Mexican weevil (Metamasius callizona) has already begun to destroy bromeliads (Tillandsia fasciculata and T. utriculata) in the preserve (www.myakkariver.org/Ycanpest.html). Invasive species are the major problem in the smaller management areas.

Brooker Creek, like other parts of central Florida, is now threatened by the development of new or enlarged power transmission lines to accommodate Progress Energy's expected 25% increase in electric power consumption in the next 10 years. PE has arranged for public discussions of their plans. As an exercise we were assigned the roles of county planner, city planner, ecologist, developer, power company director, and householder and asked to argue the pros and cons. After 20 minutes we could see how difficult it will be to arrive at solutions that satisfy all of the parties concerned.

For those of us concerned with conservation the situation is further complicated by Senate Bill 1506, which deals with electric transmission lines and pipelines. In a speaker-phone discussion with Florida Audubon's Eric Draper, who monitors legislation in Tallahassee, we learned that this bill attempts to circumvent protection for conservation land placed in the Florida Constitution by voters in 1998. The bill would remove key decisions about the use of state lands and oversight from elected officials, and will set up a formula for exchange or sale of conservation lands that may not be in the public’s interest.  It also exempts power lines and pipelines from local land use plans and zoning rules. We were urged to write letters to our representatives pointing out these objections.

The meeting finished with chapter reports. These give a perspective on progress in 5 topic areas: Water, Transportation and Growth Management, Land Acquisition and Conservation, Wildlife, and Global Warming.