Posted on Mon, May. 07, 2012

Everglades scientists play risky game of tag with near-extinct predator

By SUSAN COCKING
scocking@MiamiHerald.com

Sean McNeil and Jordan Kahn / PressLaunch.US

Researchers from the University of Florida captured, tagged and released two sawfish in the 13-foot range near East Cape Sable in Everglades National Park as part of a larger recovery project for the endangered species.

The boat captain and the scientist wielded their lasso like seasoned cowboys instead of fishermen. A good thing, since their lives literally depended on it: roping an upset, 13-foot-long, prehistoric creature waving a double-toothed saw in the water is just as dangerous as grabbing a bull by the horns.

“There’s a swing,” Captain Jim Willcox warned as the saw slashed the air. “Careful, it’s pretty green.”

But Willcox and Yannis Papastamatiou, a University of Florida scientist, managed to secure the line around both the saw and the tail of their quarry: an endangered smalltooth sawfish, the rarest marine species in U.S. waters. Now the huge brown creature lay quietly alongside their skiff near East Cape Sable in Everglades National Park, enabling them to safely complete their research mission.

“He’s a good boy!” said UF research assistant Bethan Gillett, who had caught the giant fish on a rod and reel moments earlier.

The point of this hazardous maritime rodeo is for researchers from the Smalltooth Sawfish Recovery Team to learn as much as they can to help bring back one of the top predators in the marine ecosystem — nearly wiped out through its entire range over the past century.

“These guys started disappearing before we as biologists started figuring out they were going,” said George Burgess, who runs a sawfish database at the University of Florida’s Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Once common from New York south to Florida and west to Texas, these huge members of the ray family that can grow to 25 feet are rarely seen today, except for the waters of Everglades National Park and the Keys. Not a lot is known about their life history, but scientists say they may live 25 to 30 years, reaching sexual maturity after about 10 years. Females give birth to litters of 15 to 20 pups.

With its slow growth and late maturity, the smalltooth sawfish met its demise decades ago by becoming entangled in gill nets, being slaughtered by collectors of its bill, and squeezed by shrinkage of its shallow mangrove habitat. It was declared an endangered species in the United States in 2003. Its cousin, the endangered largetooth — formerly found in the Atlantic — now is functionally extinct in U.S. waters, according to Burgess.

Burgess says recovery of the smalltooth will take a very long time.

“Even with a total ban on death, it will take 100 years, and we’re 10 years into that process, so we’ve got 90 years to go,” he said.

Sawfish numbers are so beaten down that even scientific experts like Burgess and colleagues from the National Marine Fisheries Service and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission must obtain a federal permit to handle the species. Anyone else who molests or harasses them faces a possible $10,000 federal fine.

This year, Burgess had a permit to tag 11 sawfish, which he did over the past couple of months with help from Willcox — a veteran Islamorada light-tackle guide — and several UF colleagues. They deployed the final two sets of tags on April 27 near East Cape Sable on two males in the 13-foot range. Both swam forcefully away when the procedures were completed.

Papastamatiou drilled holes in the animals’ tough dorsal fins and fastened a cigar-shaped satellite pop-up tag, an acoustic transmitter tag and a small streamer tag with the research lab’s phone number. The satellite tag records water temperature, depth and light levels at short intervals, then pops off after five months, broadcasting the accumulated data to a satellite, which sends it to the scientists’ computers.

The acoustic tag beeps a signal to underwater listening stations that tell how many times the sawfish passes through the area. The three tags are intended to back each other up.

Willcox and the scientists have been catching and tagging sawfish in the park for about three years — not enough time to draw conclusions about the animals’ movements or growth rates. Their ability to continue the research is imperiled by money problems: Federal funds are running dry, so they’re seeking private donations.

“It’s going to be a long haul,” Burgess said. “We can’t grow weary of the fight. Hopefully, our children and grandchildren will have a shot at this down the line.”

One thing in the sawfish’s favor is its charisma — a giant, brown apex predator that slashes its prey, mostly fish and some crustaceans, with its deadly bill. A recent study by scientist Barbara Wueringer of the University of Queensland in Australia found that the animals have a “sixth sense” in their bills — a series of pores that can detect movements or electrical fields of hidden fish or crabs.

The sight of a sawfish is awe-inspiring, Willcox says.

“When people see that for the first time, they feel like they’ve gone back in time,” he said. “It’s not something you want to mess with casually. That bill can come up vertically and take your head off. For me, it’s like fishing in a tournament and getting a victory. It’s about as big a rush as you can get in fishing — or anything in life.”

These photographs were taken under the authority of NMFS Permit No. 13330.

Peace may finally be at hand in the decades-long Everglades dirty-water war.

Eight months after Gov. Rick Scott flew to Washington to extend a political olive branch and personally pitch Florida’s latest plan for stopping the flow of polluted farm, ranch and yard runoff into the Everglades, state and federal negotiators are on the verge of an accord expected to be hailed by both sides as a major milestone.

A settlement crafted with the goal of resolving two protracted and paralyzing federal lawsuits — one goes back almost a quarter century, the other eight years — could be soon finalized, possibly within the month, according to officials on both sides of the confidential negotiations.

The agreement would commit Florida to a significantly expanded slate of Everglades restoration projects pegged at an estimated $890 million. Still, that’s a considerably smaller price tag than a $1.5 billion plan drawn up by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that a Miami federal judge has threatened to impose.

Most key technical issues — such as the size of additional artificial marshes used to scrub dirty, nutrient-laced storm runoff that has poisoned vast swaths of the Everglades — have been largely sorted out. But both sides cautioned the deal could still be delayed as negotiators work through the nuts and bolts of rolling out, implementing and enforcing a complex and likely controversial agreement.

Environmental groups and sugar growers have heard increasingly encouraging reports from negotiators over the past few months, though they have not been briefed on key details. But they agree the new cleanup blueprint that emerges will stand as a landmark in the costly, contentious legal and political battles to revive the struggling, shrunken River of Grass.

“It would be huge for everyone,’’ said Gaston Cantens, a vice president for Florida Crystals, one of the region’s largest sugar growers. “For a business, whenever you can have stability and certainty, then you can make long-term plans with confidence.’’

Environmentalists are reserving judgment, with some bracing for a deal they fear will be a compromise that might fall short of providing the Glades the pristine fresh water it needs and will push cleanup deadlines, already repeatedly delayed, back by years.

David Guest, an attorney for EarthJustice who represents several environmental groups in a 24-year-old lawsuit brought by the federal government that first forced Florida to deal with Glades pollution, said he has heard enough about the framework of the deal to know he’ll find plenty to question.

But even Guest acknowledges, “It’s absolutely going to be progress, there is no doubt about that.”

The South Florida Water Management District, which oversees restoration projects for the state, responded to questions with a statement, saying the state plan was “scientifically sound, economically feasible and would bring about long-term protection for America’s Everglades.’’

“We’ve had productive dialogue with our federal partners and have made significant progress toward an agreed-upon approach. However, there are some outstanding issues that are important to Florida.” For both the Obama and Scott administrations, finalizing a major Everglades deal would represent a political win and a rare example of bipartisan cooperation. It would be particularly notable for the governor, a tea party-backed, anti-regulation Republican healthcare executive who infuriated environmentalists in his first year in office by slashing environmental programs and gutting much of the state’s grown management oversight.

With the state facing the threat that U.S. District Judge Alan Gold would impose the $1.5 billion EPA cleanup plan on the state, Scott last October flew to Washington to pitch Florida’s alternative plan, meeting with high-ranking White House officials, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

He has continued campaigning since, in meetings and letters, including a Feb. 1 letter to President Barack Obama discussing encouraging settlement talks and stressing a message repeated in a state court brief filed this month requesting more time for negotiations: that the state’s time and taxpayer’s money would be better spent on projects than “pointless, expensive and time-consuming litigation.’’

In an April 5 response to Scott, EPA administrator Jackson echoed the upbeat tone, noting “we share a common desire to take advantage of the opportunity in front of us for quick, historic progress towards clean water for the Everglades.’’

Though four federal agencies initially found the state’s plan inadequate, the state has made a number of tweaks and additions during negotiations, officials said, adding some 8,400 more acres of treatment marshes — still far less than the 42,000 additional acres the EPA had proposed. In addition, the state plan calls for expanded water storage in a string of new “flow equalization basins’’ intended to keep the marshes more effective by limiting flooding or damaging dry-downs.

To save money, land swaps are being considered and water managers also intend to convert a massive reservoir that water managers halted two years and $272 million into construction in 2008 would be turned into one of new, shallower basins.

The nearly $900 million in projects would add to the $1.8 billion the state has already spent to construct a 45,000 acres of existing marshes, with an additional 11,000 acres scheduled to come online later this year. But that massive network hasn’t been enough to meet the super-low standards needed to protect the sensitive Glades ecosystem from phosphorous, a common fertilizer ingredient that drains off farms and yards with every rainstorm. It fuels the spread of cat tails and other exotics that crowd out native plants.

Though Scott has earned praise from some environmentalists, Guest, the EarthJustice attorney, isn’t among them, arguing the governor didn’t lead so much as he was pushed by courtroom defeats and mounting pressure from two federal judges.

Gold, in a 2004 suit brought by the Miccosukee Tribe and the environmental group Friends of the Everglades, has issued a series of rulings blasting the state and federal agencies for “glacial delay’’ and repeatedly failing to enforce water-pollution standards tough enough to protect the Everglades. In 2010, he ordered the EPA to draw up a cleanup plan that water managers said they couldn’t afford.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno, who oversees the original 1988 cleanup suit by the federal government, has expressed similar frustrations and urged both sides to come up with a viable plan.

Barbara Miedema, vice president of the Belle Glade-based Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative, said she expects it will still take a while to nail down the deal. With multiple federal and state agencies, more than a half-dozen environmental groups, the Miccosukee Tribe and two federal judges involved, there are numerous legal, practical and political hurdles to clear, she said.

“We hear they are close, but we have been hearing they are close for months,’’ she said. “A lot of signs say it’s likely. I’m not betting on it.’’

Pythons Swallow Whole Deer in Florida, $6 Million Tab

By Mike Di Paola - May 3, 2012 12:01 AM ET

The meandering trail in the Everglades marshlands was made by alligators, I’m told, so be careful. There’s also poisonwood, fire ants and the recently added Burmese python.

“It’s really a very harsh place to work,” says Kristen M. Hart, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and a close follower of the python, which has invaded the Everglades in startling numbers.

Pythons Swallow Whole Deer in Florida, $6 Million Tab

South Florida Water Management District via Bloomberg

A Burmese python. Kristen M. Hart, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, thinks there are tens of thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades, but says the number could be higher.

A Burmese python. Kristen M. Hart, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, thinks there are tens of thousands of Burmese pythons in the Everglades, but says the number could be higher. Source: South Florida Water Management District via Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Biologists use radio signals to track pythons in the Everglades. Eight tagged snakes are tracked almost daily, either on foot or from small planes.

Biologists use radio signals to track pythons in the Everglades. Eight tagged snakes are tracked almost daily, either on foot or from small planes. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Wildlife biologist Brian Smith tracks a Burmese python using radio signals in the Everglades. Researchers implant radio transmitters in snakes in order to track their movements in the Everglades and to record other biological data.

Wildlife biologist Brian Smith tracks a Burmese python using radio signals in the Everglades. Researchers implant radio transmitters in snakes in order to track their movements in the Everglades and to record other biological data. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

An 8-foot female python slithers through the cattails in Everglades National Park. Pythons eat birds and small mammals and, like this one, blend seamlessly into the habitat.

An 8-foot female python slithers through the cattails in Everglades National Park. Pythons eat birds and small mammals and, like this one, blend seamlessly into the habitat. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

Biologists slog through the wetlands on the trail of a Burmese python in the Everglades. Government agencies have spent at least $6 million in the past five years to develop a plan to control the growing python population in southern Florida.

Biologists slog through the wetlands on the trail of a Burmese python in the Everglades. Government agencies have spent at least $6 million in the past five years to develop a plan to control the growing python population in southern Florida. Photographer: Mike Di Paola/Bloomberg

“We don’t know how many there are,” Hart says, “and that’s ultimately the question everyone wants to know.”

She reckons tens of thousands in the Everglades, but allows the number could be higher: “I think there could be more here now than in their native range” of Southeast Asia.

I’m with Hart and other wildlife biologists tracking an 8- foot, 20-pound (2.4 meter, 9-kilo) female python that had been captured and implanted with radio transmitters a few weeks earlier.

There are many reasons why the python thrives in the Everglades, beyond the obvious fact that it eats just about anything, while almost nothing eats it.

Pythons prey on mammals, other reptiles, fish and birds. The invaders in Florida have consumed everything from the endangered Key Largo woodrat to the threatened American alligator.

Last October, a snake in the Everglades was found to have swallowed a 76-pound (34-kilo) deer. Another specimen was discovered with an adult alligator bursting from its insides -- a tooth-and-claw encounter neither animal survived.

‘Dramatic Declines’

In January, the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study showing “dramatic declines” of mammal populations in southern Florida -- raccoon, opossum, bobcat, deer and rabbit -- all believed to have become snake food.

It is not known how the Burmese python was introduced to the Everglades. Large pythons -- almost certainly escaped or discarded pets -- have been spotted here since the 1980s. By 2000, however, it was clear that the snakes were not escapees, but a growing, breeding population.

“People think this is a Florida thing,” says Ken Warren of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “But there have been reports of large constrictors found in Texas, Georgia and California, as well as the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. This is bigger than Florida.”

Federal agencies and local governments have spent more than $6 million since 2005 to figure out how to control the snakes. Eradicating them is not a realistic goal; managing them is imperative. To that end the biologists are gathering data.

‘Control Strategies’

“What we’re ultimately trying to do is understand the biology,” Hart says. “How do you exploit what you know to really knock them down? Where might the pregnant females be? What is their preferred diet? That’s the kind of information we need to design control strategies.”

Besides the python we’re tracking, there are seven other snakes implanted with transmitters, including a female weighing 140 pounds. Their movements are tracked almost daily, either on foot or from small planes.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are doing the legislative equivalent of closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Earlier this year, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved a bill to widen the ban on imported snakes to include the Burmese python and other large serpents.

Big Babies

Aside from their indiscriminate diet and unchallenged position in the food chain, Burmese pythons have other survival advantages. Hatchlings are big -- two to three feet long when they wriggle out of their eggs -- and so are not easy pickings for a potential predator. It is believed that females can reproduce without a male partner.

They are excellent swimmers, can survive for extended periods in salt water if they have to, and are barely visible in the Everglades habitat, so can sneak up on dinner with ease.

“I think she’s right between us,” the biologist next to me says. He points his antenna at my feet, which I can’t see in the murky water. Nor can I see the snake, until the slightest movement betrays her location, about a yard away.

Her head looks to be the size of my fist. Her colors aren’t brilliant but they are beautiful, a delicate patchwork of tawny lines that match the grasses all around us.

The biologists record the salient details: habitat, predominant flora, GPS coordinates, and so on. The snake doesn’t flee at our approach. For an invasive species, she looked very much at home.

(Mike Di Paola writes on preservation and the environment for Muse, the arts and culture section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

BY CURTIS MORGAN

CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Though the previous washed-out weekend might have suggested otherwise, South Florida’s rainy season has not yet begun — at least officially.

But when it does start sometime this month, expect it to be a bit wetter than normal, forecasters and water managers said Thursday.

South Florida’s wet season, which usually begins around May 20 and runs until mid-October, typically produces about 70 percent of the regional rainfall. Those five months help keep the Everglades healthy and water supplies recharged or — if the rains don’t show — produce droughts that kill crops and lawns.

Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Miami office, said a number of indicators, including the easing of the global La Niña weather pattern, point to a wetter season into June. The remaining months appear likely to be close to average.

With the region still showing lingering effects from an unusually dry fall and winter, a bit more rain would help, said Susan Sylvester, chief of water control operations for the South Florida Water Management District, which oversees the water supply for 7.7 million people from Orlando to Key West.

Above-average April rainfall, much of it delivered last weekend, helped Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties but only provided a bit of recharge for Lake Okeechobee, which serves as the region’s water barrel.

Overall, the 16-county district’s rainfall deficit since November is about 5.5 inches. Lake Okeechobee was at 11.63 feet above sea level Thursday, about two feet below its average mark for the date.

The typical wet season produces about 35 inches of rain but one tropical storm or hurricane can easily push the figure higher.

 

The Everglades, our life-sustaining River of Grass, needs every friend it can get. And it’s getting a real whopper of an advocate in Erik Eikenberg, who was named chief executive of the Everglades Foundation this week.

The Foundation is a politically influential, well-funded organization committed to Everglades restoration. Its board found Mr. Eikenberg to be the perfect fit for the lead position. His background backs up that thinking: Now a Tallahassee lobbyist, Mr. Eikenberg is a politically astute former chief aide to Gov. Charlie Crist. He’s well-connected in both Tallahassee and Washington and championed the 2008 Everglades-restoration land deal that Mr. Crist advocated with the U.S. Sugar Corp. Years before, he was chief of staff in to U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw, a Fort Lauderdale Republican who was a strong supporter of the landmark $12.4 billion Everglades restoration plan. And how’s this for serendipity? Mr. Eikenberg, a native of Coral Springs, is a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The Everglades warrants every bit of political muscle Mr. Eikenberg can flex. It is not only an essential ecosystem, delivering water to South Florida from Lake Okeechobee. In just the past three years, restoration projects have created more than 10,000 jobs — and that was in the midst of a recession. Yet hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on the water system. A healthy Everglades spurs recreational tourism, another moneymaker for the state.

Despite this vital role that the Everglades plays in our lives, it has, over too many years, been abused by polluted runoff from farming areas and homes, gouged by development and, of course, had its funds drained to help balance the state budget. Last year, Gov. Scott and the Legislature decimated funds for Everglades restoration projects. Short-sighted, to say the least. This year, $30 million was restored for projects.

Everglades restoration needs sustained and consistent funding.

In Mr. Eikenberg, the River of Grass appears to have a sustained and consistent voice advocating for its good health.

Eric Eikenberg, chief of staff to former Gov. Charlie Crist and a seasoned Republican strategist, has landed one of the state’s most influential environmental advocacy jobs.

The Everglades Foundation, a Palmetto Bay-based group whose membership boasts deep pockets and political clout, will announce Wednesday that Eikenberg will become its new chief executive.

Eikenberg has experience and connections in both Tallahassee and Washington and championed the Everglades restoration land deal Crist pitched in 2008 with the U.S. Sugar Corp., a controversial project strongly supported by the foundation and other environmental groups.

“Eric impressed us from the first moment we met,’’ foundation Chairman Paul Tudor Jones II said in a release. “He has a deep understanding of what it takes to achieve success both in Washington and Tallahassee and he has the leadership skills that will help the foundation continue to be at the forefront of Everglades restoration.’’

Eikenberg, 36, a Coral Springs native and graduate of Majory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland who will leave his current job as a Tallahassee lobbyist, said he looked forward to leading an organization he called “the premier voice when it comes to Everglades restoration.’’

With a well-heeled, well-connected board led by Jones — a billionaire hedge fund manager and avid fly-fisher who owns an Islamorada home — the foundation has significantly raised its profile and influence in shaping Everglades policies in the past few years.

Under previous chief executive Kirk Fordham — also a former Republican political aide in Washington who resigned in March to lead Gill Action, a Colorado-based gay advocacy organization — the foundation’s budget grew from $3.9 million in 2008 to nearly $7 million this year.

The foundation boasts a team of scientists and last year added three full-time lobbyists in Tallahassee. It’s also a major contributor to other environmental groups in the state, last year giving a total of $1.3 million to 15 other organizations.

Eikenberg comes with a similar political pedigree to Fordham but with far more Tallahassee connections.

He spent two years as Crist’s top aide. He also ran the former governor’s ill-fated Senate campaign before resigning in May 2010 when Crist, facing a certain loss to Marco Rubio, quit the Republican Party to run as an independent.

Earlier, Eikenberg spent four years in Washington as chief of staff to U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw, a Fort Lauderdale Republican who was a strong supporter of the landmark $12.4 billion Everglades restoration effort. Since June 2010, Eikenberg has worked for the Holland & Knight law firm in Tallahassee, co-chairing a lobbying team with former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez.

In a foundation release, Martinez and Shaw praised the choice.

“Eric has the ability to work with anybody and find solutions to difficult problems,’’ said Shaw, who called him “the perfect fit.’’

Eikenberg, who will move to Miami with his wife, Tonya, and four children, said he was looking forward to “re-engaging’’ on Everglades issues.

“The mission is simple: Save the Everglades,’’ he said.

By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press – 17 hours ago   

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden has taken what he says was his first airboat ride, touring a swath of the Everglades while touting the benefits of a federally funded restoration project to restore the flow of water.

Biden boated past a bridge project west of Miami that will elevate a cross-Everglades highway that long dammed water flowing through Everglades National Park. Environmentalists say the project will improve wetlands habitat for alligators, wading birds and other wildlife.

The project was approved in 2000 but construction was only expedited after years of legal challenges using stimulus money under President Barack Obama's administration, park officials say.

Biden brought his granddaughter along on the airboat tour and also was joined by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, two Florida Democrats.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Scott vetoes ‘Conservation of Wildlife’ bill

By Virginia Chamlee | 04.09.12 | 9:56 am

Gov. Rick Scott (Pic via Facebook)

Gov. Rick Scott on Friday vetoed a bill that would have allowed for the placement of exotic animals (like zebras and rhinoceros) on public lands. H.B. 1117, known as the “Conservation of Wildlife” bill, was lambasted by environmental groups that argued it would “supplant threatened and iconic Florida species with exotic” animals.

The bill would have allowed private zoos and aquariums to lease state conservation lands in order to construct and operate breeding facilities for exotic wildlife, including large hooved animals. Groups like Audubon of Florida called the bill’s passage both ecologically and economically irresponsible.

In his veto letter, Scott wrote that the bill was unnecessary, as the the state’s water management districts already have the authority to use state-owned lands for purposes “not inconsistent with the State Constitution”:

The Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund (Board of Trustees) and the governing boards of the five water management districts may currently authorize the use of state-owned and district-owned lands, respectively, for any use not inconsistent with the State Constitution and Florida Statutes. Additionally, I believe that the bill lacks sufficient safeguards, and may restrict the current authority of the Board of Trustees and the governing boards, to ensure the protection of state and district lands, native species, and habitats.

As The Tampa Bay Times‘ Craig Pittman notes, Scott vetoed that bill, but signed an agricultural bill (H.B. 1197) that contains a provision lifting a ban on dyeing chicks, bunnies and dogs a rainbow of colors.

“Animal welfare groups and veterinarians had opposed the bill, which had been filed at the request of a dog groomer who wanted to color his show dogs for more dramatic effect,” writes Pittman. “It takes effect July 1.”

via floridaindependent.com