PrimalNature.org
03/09/2008 Wetlands in the Western Everglades Undergoing Destruction
Southwestern Florida has considerable old growth, in particular in Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Fakahatchee Stand State Preserve, and Big Cypress National Preserve. It also provides habitat for endangered wood storks and endangered Florida panthers, among other wildlife. The area’s streams, wet prairies, and wet woodlands and forests, stretching across public and private lands, provide drinking water for wildlife and humans, recharge aquifers, serve as habitat for fish and other aquatic creatures, filter pollutants, and prevent flooding. Nevertheless, developers have been and are destroying unprotected wetlands at an alarming rate. A draft of a suppressed US Fish and Wildlife report states that between 1995 and 2000 twenty-four wetlands-destruction permits affecting 1790 acres were issued and that “the tremendous development pressure and lack of a rigorous regulatory program are . . . precluding opportunities for conservation, resource management, and restoration in southwest Florida.” The situation has not improved since 2000. Currently three projects southwest of Corkscrew Swamp (Parklands, Saturnia Falls, and Mirasol), would destroy 1147 acres of wetlands in Cocohatchee Slough, which rises in the swamp. The slough channels water to other parts of the Western Everglades and provides a source of "prey to wood storks raising their young.
Developers intending to build in wetlands must obtain permits from the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is obligated to ask the Corps not to issue a dredge and fill permit if the activity is to occur in the habitat of a threatened or endangered species and if the developer has not adequately protected the species or offered reasonable mitigation. FWS seldom takes this step, and, if it does, the Corps is likely not to pay attention. What is accepted as reasonable mitigation is frequently a sham. A favorite tactic is offering to remove melaleuca trees. Melaleuca is an invasive exotic species, but its tendency to dominate is being successfully countered by two leaf-eating insects from Australia, the source of the trees, and, even where the melaleuca flourishes, the presence of the melaleuca does not prevent the land from functioning as a wetland.
Conservationists are fighting back. The Cocohatchee Slough Coalition (made up of Audubon of Florida, the Collier County Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Florida Wildlife Federation, and The Conservancy of Southwest Florida) is challenging all three projects that endanger the slough.. It succeeded in having the federal permit for Parklands canceled after the developer violated and lost its state permit. It lost a challenge to Mirasol’s state permit but is suing to have the federal permit canceled.
Since Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is the site of seven hundred acres of old-growth baldcypress, two hundred of them virgin, damage to the Cocohatchee Slough will directly impact old growth. To learn more about the work of the coalition and to find out how you can help them, go to www.SaveOurSwamp.org .
(This article summarizes Ted Williams, "Incite/Bait and Switch," Audubon, March/April 2008, pp. 60-66, supplemented by information from Old Growth in the East: A Survey on this web site.)