"A bridge to help heal the Everglades" @miamiherald

A bridge to help heal the EvergladesBy CURTIS MORGAN

Cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

It was touted as a triumph of modern engineering when it opened in 1928, a road across the once-impassable Everglades that took 2.6 million sticks of dynamite and 13 years to construct.

On Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar led a celebration of a long-awaited, different sign of progress on Tamiami Trial: the completion of a one-mile-long bridge designed to begin healing the ecological wounds inflicted by a road that has blocked the flow of the Everglades for nearly 90 years.

“It truly is a crown jewel of an achievement,” said Salazar, who snipped a red-ribbon, then took a ceremonial first drive across the span in a hybrid SUV.

The $81 million bridge, scheduled to open to daily traffic in a few weeks, ranks among the most significant Everglades projects to date. It sets the stage for the first breach later this year of a historic road that has been far more than just a lime rock-and-asphalt barrier to reviving the shrunken, struggling River of Grass. The effort to get more water under the bumpy two-lane black top, originally launched by Congress in 1989, has encapsulated all the numbing delays, doubts and disputes that have dogged the broader plans to restore the Everglades.

The bridge took four years to build — but it was a two-decade battle to simply get it started.

“It’s a day that a lot of folks thought they maybe would never see,’’ said Julie Hill-Gabriel, Everglades policy coordinator for Audubon of Florida. In all, about 200 environmentalists, federal officials, park managers and rangers came out to mark the milestone and take in a new postcard vista. For the first time, motorists can view vast, bird-dotted marshes past the L-29 levee to the north and a tangled jungle lining the Trail to the south.

By itself, the bridge won’t initially make much of a difference to the health of the Everglades – at least until crews later this year remove the old road bed it replaces just a few miles west of Krome Avenue, which will boost current water flows by as much as 15 percent. When the project is completed by raising and reinforcing about 10 miles of the adjacent Trail to handle higher water levels, peak rainy season water flows could nearly double compared to the volume that passes through 19 culverts built under the old road.

That should provide some relief to one of the driest swaths of the Everglades fed by the Shark River Slough, once a major artery of life-giving water. The Trail, along with levees and drainage canals built in the 1960s, choked water flow to a fifth of its historic volume and profoundly altered the landscape, killing off marsh plants and driving away wildlife, with wading birds dropping as much as 90 percent in the park. The ripple effects extended down to a too-salty Florida Bay plagued by sea-grass die-offs and algae blooms.

“The big story is that water levels in the wetlands can go up and that’s a very good thing,’’ said Tom Van Lent, senior scientist for the Everglades Foundation. Re-establishing the broad “sheet flow” of the River of Grass – rather than gushing water through narrow culverts – also will start to help recreate natural conditions that shaped wildlife patterns and the “ridge and slough” geography that defines the Everglades marsh, he said.

“Besides just getting water across the road, there is a lot of stuff in that water: fish, turtles, nutrients, sediments,’’ Van Lent said. “Anything that is in that water needs to get to the other side of the road.”

Still, while the bridge is a milestone, park managers and scientists acknowledge it’s also only a stepping stone, one piece of a complex multi-billion-dollar overhaul of Everglades plumbing that will take decades to complete.

Just for starters, to move the massive amount of water scientists say is needed to restore the Glades, a lot more bridging will be needed.

The Interior Department, which oversees national parks, drew up blueprints in 2010 calling for an additional 5.5 miles of bridging. The $310 million plan, which would erect four more bridges of varying length along the Trail, has been “authorized” by Congress and is currently being designed.

Salazar, who is stepping down as Interior secretary after championing restoration in 11 visits to the Everglades, said the Obama administration intends to “shake the trees’’ looking for money for the work, with one possible source the hundreds of millions of dollars coming to the state from the settlement of the BP oil spill in the Gulf. But it remains uncertain if a divided Congress dealing with sequester budget cuts will sign off on the proposal.

For now, there’s also not nearly enough water to send south through the Everglades and much of what there is isn’t clean enough for the sensitive Everglades, tainted by too much phosphorus, a nutrient in farm, pasture and yard runoff that is damaging to sensitive Everglades plants. Now, much of it gets diverted down the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, where it has triggered fish kills and algae blooms. Florida’s plans to build more storage areas and artificial marshes to absorb the pollution, already delayed by a decade, have been pushed back another decade under the state’s latest $880 million clean-up expansion plan.

Another on-going $1 billion plan to add reservoirs and speed up work on the Central Everglades is on the fast-track – but won’t work without additional bridging on the Trail. Beyond that, there are still unresolved technical questions. Raising water levels in the Everglades could raise ground water levels in surrounding lands, including the flood-prone suburbs of west Miami-Dade, or even divert water away from the county’s major well field and Biscayne Bay.

Still, for every other project to work, raising more of the Tamiami Trail is critical.

“There is no middle ground. Without a fix to this issue, Everglades restoration can’t go anywhere,’’ said Van Lent. “The one-mile bridge got us as far as you can go. Now, you have to do the rest of the road.’’

Environmentalists, park managers and federal officials hope fixing the rest of the road will prove easier than the first mile.

The bridge is the last major piece in the Modified Water Deliveries project, originally approved by Congress in 1989 as part of plan to restore water flows to a newly acquired 107,000-acre section of Everglades National Park. But “Mod Waters,” as it came to be known, became mired by shifts in restoration plans, disputes over flood protection for residents in a rural section once known as the 8.5 Square Mile Area and multiple lawsuits – four of them by the Miccosukee Tribe.

The Tribe, arguing that construction would violate an array of environmental rules and that a bridge was a waste of taxpayer money, eventually won an injunction in 2008 from a federal judge to block the work. The tribe, which did not respond to a request for comment on the new bridge, has long argued that a $17 million plan to clean out the existing culverts would provide faster relief for high water damaging tribal land, tree islands and wildlife north of the Trail.

The Sierra Club, meanwhile, complained the bridge was inadequate, championing a $1.6 billion, 11-mile “skyway” that was ultimately rejected as too expensive.

In 2008, the National Research Council summed things up in a report calling the project delays “one of the most discouraging stories in Everglades restoration.”

But the gridlock was finally broken just after that scathing report with an obscure amendment slipped into a federal spending measure. It granted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers an extraordinary exemption from federal environmental laws, lifting the injunction and finally allowing the bridge to move forward.

A handful of additional restoration projects also have broken ground since, giving advocates and engineers that have devoted decades, even entire careers to the Everglades a sense that all the talk of restoration is at long last becoming reality. For all the concerns, the mood on the bridge was upbeat, elevated by flocks of ibises and pairs of wood storks drifting by.

“We’ve been talking about getting more water to the park for my entire lifetime,’’ said Neal McAliley, chairman of the South Florida National Parks Trust. “Today, we’re doing it.’’

Park Superintendent Dan Kimball said his father, a 93-year old civil engineer and World War II veteran, helped him put the battle over the bridge in perspective when he showed him the plans several years ago to build one and then push for more in the future. His father, Kimball said, called the first bridge a “beachhead” – a critical foothold to wage a wider battle.

“Today,’’ Kimball said, “I’m pleased to report that our ‘beach-head’ is now secured and we’re moving out and on.’’

"Everglades python haul low, but scientists envision wealth of new data" @miamiherald

A month-long hunt for invasive Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades didn’t result in much of a haul, but scientists and outdoors experts say the data collected will be invaluable.

By CHARLES RABIN

crabin@miamiherald.com

The numbers are relatively benign, and they didn’t change much in last weekend of the Florida Everglades great python hunt, but event sponsors are calling it nothing short of a great success.

Reports as of Friday were that 50 Burmese pythons had been captured during the month-long chase that ended at midnight Sunday, and Sunday evening, Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino said he wasn’t aware whether the total had increased.

Still, he called ridding the Everglades of any of the hugely invasive predators that have caused havoc with the ecosystem, and which have been seen challenging top-of-the-food-chain alligators for supremacy, nothing short of fantastic.

“We’ll have a better handle on the exact numbers by late Monday or Tuesday,” Pino said. “But undoubtedly for us, it’s a complete success. You can argue it’s not a huge number, but its 50 pythons not in the ecosystem causing havoc.”

Hunters had to register with the wildlife commission, take a quick online course, and follow specific humane rules the commission determined were best fit to kill the Southeast Asian native monsters that can grow to close to 20 feet long. The pythons can be legally killed only by a gunshot to the head or by beheading with a machete.

Hunters have until 5 p.m. Monday to turn in what they have captured. They can keep the skins to do with as they wish. Prizes of up to $1,500 for the most pythons caught, and $1,000 for largest python captured, will be awarded at Zoo Miami on Saturday.

No one knows exactly how the Burmese python made its way to South Florida, but it has been around for decades, and multiplying at an alarming rate. It’s not uncommon to find females carrying dozens upon dozens of eggs. The largest python caught to date was 17.5 feet long and weighed 164 pounds, though six to nine feet is more typical in the Everglades.

Scientists estimate there are now tens of thousands of slithery reptiles — that used to be common as pets — in the wild. Though they are large, they are extremely difficult to spot, often hiding among weeds or in dark water.

Last year the Obama administration banned the importation of four species of constrictor, including the Burmese pythons. It is also illegal to keep them as pets unless you can produce paperwork showing you had the creature prior to July 2010.

Pino said by Monday night his agency should have a better feel for the totals, but, he said, that really doesn’t matter.

“The data we’ll get will be unbelievable,” he said.

"Florida Holds High-Profile Hunt for Low-Profile Creatures" @nytimes - George Lindemann

By Poh Si Teng

Stalking a Python: Florida’s wildlife agency is organizing its first python hunting competition. A group known as the Florida Python Hunters is out to win the challenge. Will it even catch one?

 

By

 

Published: January 23, 2013

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — For as long as anyone can remember, hunters here have wielded machetes, knives, rifles and crossbows as they swept past thickets of mosquitoes and saw grass in pursuit of alligators, feral hogs, bobcats and vermin of all sizes.

But on the outskirts of the Everglades this month, a different kind of hunt is taking place, and among those on the trail are three men with little macho swagger and zero hunting finery. They drive up gravel roads alongside the brush in a red “man-van” (a well-lived-in Toyota Sienna) and a blue Prius (“You can’t beat the mileage,” says one).

And when they get lucky, they clamber down from their vehicles and snare enormous Burmese pythons with their bare hands, shrugging off the inevitable bites.

Two of the hunters are brothers, reared in the swamps of Central Florida with eight other siblings. The third is a Utah native, now a Miami high school teacher, who met one of the brothers in the apartment building they share. They quickly discovered they have much in common — they are Mormons, for one thing, and not afraid of snakes, for another.

Theirs was truly a chance encounter, considering that pythons far outnumber snake-savvy Mormons in South Florida.

“We don’t hunt on the Sabbath,” declared Blake Russ, 24, a Florida International University student, as he peered out the open door of the man-van.

But on this day, the brothers are in it to win it. They have joined Florida’s “Python Challenge 2013,” the open-invitation contest organized by the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. So frustrated are wildlife officials with the prolific Burmese pythons that on Jan. 12 they began a one-month python hunt in South Florida, opening it up to just about anybody over the age of 18. The hunt is taking place mostly on state land, not national park land, which is off limits.

The only requirement is that contestants must take a training course — online. A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the hunter who catches the longest snake and $1,500 to the one who “harvests” the most snakes. About 1,300 people have signed up.

The pythons, considered invasive and uninvited, arrived here as pets. After some escaped or were let loose by fed-up owners, they slithered toward marshy land, mostly in and around the Everglades. There, they snack regularly on native wading birds, gators, deer, bobcat, opossums, raccoons and rabbits. They breed easily, laying 8 to 100 eggs, depending on the size of the female.

Killing the snake is a requirement of the “Python Challenge,” and for this the event’s Web site suggests a firearm or a captive bolt (the slaughterhouse stunning tool used to chilling effect in the film “No Country for Old Men”). Chopping off the head is permissible, the Web site explains, but difficult, because the brain lives on (for a while). For decapitation, machetes are the state-recommended weapon.

“Regardless of the technique you choose, make sure your technique results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain,” the Web site states.

The task is daunting. Estimates of how many Burmese pythons live in the wild here range from 5,000 to more than 100,000.

“Do we really know?” asked Skip Snow, a wildlife biologist at Everglades National Park. “No. No, we don’t.”

The snakes are everywhere and nowhere. Catching them is easy. The pythons — which can stretch to 20 feet and more — are lazy. They dislike moving. They rarely travel. Instead, they wait out their prey and ambush it, sinking their teeth in to hold it in place while they wrap it up tight, suffocate it and swallow it whole, little by little.

It is finding them that will drain hunters of all patience and fortitude, until the clocks ticks down and it’s time for a beer, or, for the three hunters in their man-van, a roadside fruit shake. Because the snakes blend in with the yellowish, brownish brush here, they are almost as hard to find as a Glenn Beck fan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

“It’s like looking for a piece of camouflage,” said Devin Belliston, 26, the science teacher in the group.

Seeing just one “Burm” is enough to rev up a hunter for days.

“It’s like seeing Bigfoot,” said Bryan Russ, 35, Mr. Russ’s older brother, who once unleashed 30 garter snakes in an Idaho college dormitory. (He got kicked out of school, which he called a “great life lesson.”)

Mr. Belliston and Blake Russ make up part of a fivesome who call themselves the Florida Python Hunters. Founded by Ruben Ramirez, who has been catching snakes for 27 years, the five men are licensed to hunt pythons. They have an impressive success rate at spotting snakes, catching them with their hands and turning them over to state wildlife officials. Last year, Mr. Ramirez and George Brana nabbed an imposing 16-foot, 8-inch python. Mr. Russ and Mr. Belliston, who started python hunting in May, have caught 15 pythons since then.

“You grab them, and let them strike at you and strike at you until they wear themselves out,” said Blake Russ, who leaned out of the man-van as it rolled slowly near an abandoned mango orchard and a canal. His eyes scanned the edge of the grass. Nothing.

Once Blake rode a scooter to a hunt, his flip-flops planted firmly on the floorboard. He spotted a python, hopped off, wrangled it into a pillow case, hopped back on and sped away.

Studying the python lifestyle is critical to success. Hunters must know that the best time to find one is the morning after the temperature drops into the 60s or below. The snakes surface to warm up in the sun. They stay close to water, so canals and levies are a good bet. They like rock piles.

Most savvy hunters stick to gravel paths or roads that abut grassy areas with water nearby.

At night, especially in summer, the hunters “road cruise.” Pythons come out then, sometimes onto the asphalt, because it is cooler at night. Sound does not bother them.

When caught, “they squirt out a mixture of feces and urine,” Bryan Russ said. “It smells like musk, like wet dog. Ruben calls it, ‘The smell of success.’ ”

How many pythons have been caught in the competition’s first week? As of Tuesday, all of 27. Mr. Ramirez and his team have caught eight.

The men scoff at those machete-toting novices from out of state who have shown up in their python-hunting finery.

“This guy had brand new clothes, beautiful new boots,” Mr. Ramirez said, of a fellow he had spotted nearby. “He was standing there on the water’s edge. I was just waiting for a gator to take him and do a gator death roll.”

Their prediction: After a couple of days of tedium, “these guys, they’ll all be like, ‘I’m going to South Beach,’ ” Bryan Russ said.

But the Florida Python Hunters persist.

Spying a black clump on a patch of grass, Blake leapt from the man-van and scooped it up. The Everglades racer whipped around and bit him several times. “It’s like a pinch,” he said. Blood bubbled up.

Not quite a python, but for these hobby herpetologists, any snake is better than no snake.

“People should really know that this is what it’s like,” he said, referring to the success rate, not the blood.

By day’s end, the team’s python count was zero. Nothing but optimism prevailed. “We’re going out road cruising tonight,” Blake Russ said. “Do you want to come?”

"Dave Barry on man-vs.-snake Everglades smackdown" @miamiherald

Ever fearful that Florida isn’t seen as insane enough, the state has invited the gun-toting world to come here and blast a python.

Everyone gets into the act: U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, gets a grip on a 13-foot, 90-pound Burmese Python last January in the Glades.

Would you like to make some extra money, and at the same time run the risk of being eaten by a carnivorous reptile the size of a war canoe?

If your answer is “yes,” I have an exciting opportunity for you. It’s called the Python Challenge, and I am not making it up. It’s a real event that was dreamed up by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which apparently was concerned that Florida does not seem insane enough to people in normal states.

The Python Challenge is a month-long contest; its purpose, according to the official website (pythonchallenge.org) is “to raise public awareness about Burmese pythons.”

Q. What do they mean by “raise public awareness about?”

A. They mean “kill.”

The contest is open to anybody who registers, pays a $25 fee and takes an online training course; so far about 400 people have signed up. These people have from Jan. 12 through Feb. 10 to go out in the Everglades and raise public awareness on as many pythons as they can. There’s a $1,500 prize for whoever kills the most pythons, a $1,000 prize for whoever kills the longest python, and a $500 prize for whoever kills the python with the best personality.

I’m kidding about that last prize, of course. Burmese pythons do not have personalities: All they do is eat and destroy the ecosystem. They are the teenage males of the animal kingdom. That’s why the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is trying to get rid of them.

Be advised, however, that you cannot kill these pythons any old way you want. No, sir: This is an official state-sponsored event, and if there is one word that comes to mind whenever you hear the name “Florida,” that word is “ethics.” The Python Challenge guidelines clearly state that you have — this is an actual quote — “an ethical obligation to ensure a Burmese python is killed in a humane manner.” That means you cannot kill your python using cruel and inhumane methods such as forcing it to watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo until it commits suicide, or placing it at the entrance to a Boca Raton restaurant just as the Early Bird special begins, where it would be trampled to death in seconds.

So how do you ethically kill a Burmese python? According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, you can use a device called a “captive bolt,” or you can shoot it in the head with a firearm of “a safe, but effective caliber.” (Got that? You want your caliber to be safe, but also effective.)

You are also permitted to whack off the python’s head with a machete, provided you do so in an ethical manner. To quote the commission: “Make sure your technique results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain.” (If you think I’m making any of this up, I urge you to go read the Python Challenge guidelines.)

One thing the guidelines are not very specific about is how you’re supposed to catch the python in the first place. I happen to have some experience in this area. A few years ago, I captured a snake that somehow got into my office and onto my desk, despite the fact that I live in Coral Gables, where snakes are a clear violation of the zoning code. The technique I used to capture this particular snake was as follows:

1. Make an extremely non-masculine sound such as might be emitted by a recently castrated Teletubby.

2. Run out to the patio and grab the barbecue tongs.

3. Run back into the office and, while squinting really hard so as not to make eye contact with the snake, pick it up with the tongs.

4. Run, whimpering, back out onto the patio with mincing steps and quickly release the snake in such a manner that it falls into your swimming pool.

5. Change your underwear.

Bear in mind that the snake I captured was of the non-python variety, and was only about two feet long. To capture a Burmese python, which can grow to nearly 20 feet, you will need really big barbecue tongs.

At this point you are no doubt wondering: “If I capture a python, is it safe to eat the meat?” I will answer that with another question: Where do you think Slim Jims come from?

No! That is a joke, and as such it is protected from lawsuits by the Constitution. The actual answer, according to the Python Challenge website, is that “neither the Florida Department of Health nor the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services have stated that python meat is safe to consume.” I interpret that to mean: “Yes.”

Here’s some more good news: You can keep your python skins! The website lists the names of some companies that might want them, including a company called Dragon Backbone, which “will trade a knife for four python skins at least four feet long.” (I am still not making this up.) The website also says that a company called All American Gator Products “can tan a Burmese python skin and fashion it into something you want.” (The website does not come right out and use the term “thong,” but we can read between the lines.)

In conclusion, I think the Python Challenge is one of those ideas that cannot possibly go wrong, and, assuming it goes off with a minimum of unnecessary deaths, it should be extended to other unwanted species, starting with a Cockroach Challenge. So to all you python hunters, I say: Good luck! We Floridians all look forward to the big moment when the dead pythons are counted and the winner declared. It’s bound to be exciting. You know how good this state is at counting things.

By Dave Barry

"Python hunt needs a snake-charming queen" @miamiherald

If we’re serious about sending forth an army of gun-toting, beer-drinking, redneck snake-hunters to wade into the Everglades and eradicate the python hordes, we’re going to need more than a couple of piddling cash prizes.

We’ll need a queen.

Any officially sanctioned snake-killing frenzy worth a damn comes with a beauty contest. Apparently, girls in bathing attire, presumably of the snakeskin variety, are downright essential to a successful hunt.

So far, only about 400 contestants have signed up for South Florida’s “2013 Python Challenge,” which kicks off Saturday. Compare that to the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater (that’s the other Sweetwater) which brings in about 30,000 apparent lunatics every year to a dusty town in the middle of Texas with a population of not quite 11,000, where the only other tourist attraction is the National WASP Museum (for the women Army fliers, not the insects.) South Florida’s python shindig would need 18 million attendees just to keep pace, proportionately, with the festivities in Sweetwater.

What Sweetwater offers, along with the rattlesnake holocaust, is a Miss Snake Charmer, though the title is a bit of misnomer, given that pageant winners are required to decapitate a rattlesnake. I dug up this charming Associated Press quote from Laney Wallace, 16, Miss Snake Charmer circa 2011. “Tomorrow I get to skin snakes and chop their heads off. And I’m super excited about it.”

Go ahead with your snide Freudian analysis, but last year that giant posse of displaced Texas cowboys collected bounties on 1,700 pounds of rattlesnake redeemed at $5.50 a pound.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, meanwhile, is offering $1,000 to the hunter who brings in the longest python, and $1,500 for the fellow who bring in the most pythons. Of course, certain rules apply. No roadkill. No pets. “DON’T dismember pythons into more than two pieces or they will not qualify for the ‘longest snake’ category.”

Also, pythons must be dispatched humanely. Miss Snake Charmer would be disappointed, but Florida rules won’t allow decapitations. Gunshots to the head, however, will be okay. Also, “captive bolts,” a slaughterhouse instrument familiar to moviegoers as the killer’s favored weapon in No Country for Old Men. A special FWC online python challenge training course suggests: “To target the correct area, draw an imaginary line from the rear left of the head to the right eye, and then draw another line from the rear right of the head to the left eye. While one person is holding the snake in place, position the captive bolt where those lines intersect. The bolt must enter at a slight angle, not flush to the skull.”

Imagine some conscientious serpent hunter, trying to figure the prescribed humane angle while wrestling a 15-foot Burmese python in two feet of black swamp water. No, this particular snake extravaganza will be all about gunplay. If the hunters can find something to shoot.

Apparently, the idea of a python hunt came out of the governor’s office, where it was conceived as a “market driven” solution to a fast-breeding exotic that’s caused considerable damage to native wading bird and small mammal populations. (Instead of, say, pushing Congress to ban the importation of exotic reptiles.)

But Michael Dorcas, a herpetology researcher, author of I nvasive Pythons in the United States and an expert in these stealthy exotics, suggested Monday that the marketplace may seem a little bare. “The one thing I know about these snakes,” said Dorcas, who knows everything about these snakes, “is that they’re very difficult to find.” Dorcas said that Burmese pythons are so secretive and so well camouflaged, “we’ve walked right past a 15-foot python without seeing it.”

He said the snakes range across thousands of square kilometers of southern Florida, most of that habitat away from roads and canals and nearly inaccessible to most hunters. “Probably, some pythons will be removed, but the damage to the overall population will be minimal.”

Dorcas worries more about unintended consequences to other populations, including humans. The Sun-Sentinel reported that hunters from 17 states have signed up for the month-long python chase. They’ll be coming into unfamiliar terrain, laden with poisonous native snakes, underwater limestone holes and other local hazards. The required 30-minute online training course seems a bit inadequate.

Dorcas is more worried about native snakes, likely to be scarfed up by frustrated python hunters, ready to blast away at any reticulated reptile that happens their way. Saturday could be a very bad day to be a brown water snake caught out without proper identification.

Ironically, the Rick Scott Python Challenge comes the same year that the famous Rattlesnake Roundup in Claxton, Ga., immortalized in the Harry Crews novel Feast of Snakes, stopped rounding up snakes. Wildlife officials noticed that the hunters had been pouring kerosene down tortoise burrows, setting them alight and catching the panicked snakes as they escaped. Several hundred other species also resided in those burned-out turtle abodes. Meanwhile, the Eastern rattlesnake has neared extinction. So this year, the roundup became a non-lethal wildlife celebration.

Texans, of course, don’t care much about biodiversity and the relative value of venomous native snakes. Rattlesnake hunts persist, guilt free. Maybe some of the promotional ideas that make these Texas hunts so damn successful might be worth emulating in python-plagued Florida. For instance, in Brownsville, home of the Brownsville Rattlesnake Roundup, locals distinguish themselves from the crazies in Sweetwater by devouring the still-beating hearts of freshly killed rattlesnakes. “They’re little-bitty. You don’t really chew them up. You just put them in your mouth and swallow them,” a festival organizer explained to BigCountry.com, an Abilene, Texas, news website.

A first-time taster compared rattlesnake heart to “eating a slug….. It sure doesn’t taste like chicken.”

Who knows if the still-beating heart of a Burmese python heart in South Florida would have the same gourmet appeal as a west Texas rattlesnake? No, what we need is a queen, Miss Python Challenge 2013.

With a little luck, she’ll be as adept at public relations and reptile dissection as Miss Snake Charmer Laney Wallace, who didn’t slither away from her queenly duties. “You have to make sure you don’t pop the bladder,” she warned. “That’s a huge mess.”

By Fred Grimm

"Reservoir for #Everglades restoration to get pumps to clear out its salty water" @pbpost

Reservoir for Everglades restoration to get pumps to clear out its salty water

By Christine Stapleton

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Water managers approved a contract Thursday for $64 million to install six massive pumps in the controversial L-8 Reservoir — a move that will finally put the 10-year-old water storage system to use and jump-start new Everglades restoration projects.

The reservoir at a rock mine on Southern Boulevard, which figured prominently in two Palm Beach County corruption scandals, has been dormant for lack of a way to get the water out of the 60-foot deep holes. The pits have not been used because the water in them contains unacceptable levels of chlorides. Without the pumps, the district cannot flush the chloride-laden water out of the pits to see if, as expected, the chloride levels drop when the pits refill.

Making the 15 billion gallon reservoir operational is included in a suite of projects in the state’s $880 million plan to improve water quality in the Everglades. The pumps should be operational in May 2013.

"Slime-covered river prompts Florida environmental groups to sue Corps of Engineers" @EvergladesFoundation

Posted on July 24, 2012

A coalition of environmental groups is suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, arguing that the way the agency dumps polluted water from Lake Okeechobee is causing toxic algae blooms throughout the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers.

"This is making people sick, figuratively and literally," said Becky Ayech of the Environmental Coalition of Southwest Florida, citing complaints about everything from nausea to earaches among people who live along the river. "People have a right to clean water."

When heavy rains push the water level in Lake Okeechobee too high, the Corps opens floodgates that dump millions of gallons of lake water into the Caloosahatchee and also into the St. Lucie River on the state's east coast. But the lake water is full of pollutants, especially nutrients that can fuel algae blooms.

Algae blooms have plagued the Caloosahatchee eight of the past 11 years, the lawsuit points out. Last year's algae bloom lasted for eight weeks, during which officials in Glades, Hendry and Lee counties warned residents to avoid contact with the river water and not to eat the fish.

Even worse, according to the suit filed Monday in federal court, is the fact that what the Corps is releasing from the lake is so polluted it forces the shutdown of a water plant that is supposed to use the river to quench the thirst of 40,000 people.

The problem, according to the suit, is that when water levels are low, the Corps holds water back from the rivers —- to the point where the Caloosahatchee sometimes runs backward. That not only lets the freshwater river turn salty, it also bottles up the pollution in the lake and makes it worse when it's finally released, the suit contends.

Corps spokesman John Campbell said the agency normally does not comment on litigation. However, he said, the Corps manages the lake level in accordance with a 2008 guide that was prepared with the help of some environmental groups.

 via evergladesfoundation.org

 

"BP oil-spill fines could boost #Everglades restoration"

Environmentalists eye billions to shore up Florida ecology

By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau

10:24 a.m. EDT, July 8, 2012

WASHINGTON -- Everglades restoration backers are aiming to get a big piece of the billions of dollars of fines that oil giant BP is expected to pay for polluting the Gulf of Mexico and disrupting Florida's delicate ecology during the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010.

BP's fines are expected to range from $5 billion to $21 billion, and most of the money would go toward restoring the marshes, fishing industry and oil-damaged businesses and resources along the Gulf Coast. But environmental leaders estimate that hundreds of millions of dollars could be devoted to ecological projects all the way down to South Florida.

They're not just dreaming.

Last month, Congress passed a bill that will steer 80 percent of any fine money to Florida and other Gulf Coast states. And while the Florida Legislature passed a law last year that says 75 percent of the state's share must be devoted to the oil-damaged counties along its northwest coast, the rest can be spent on ecological restoration elsewhere.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force last month that the BP money would provide significant funding for conservation and that he considers the Everglades "a great example for the work that we do for conservation and for jobs."

Salazar's encouraging words and the tantalizing prospect of a giant pot of restoration money prompted environmentalists to start drawing up proposals designed to buffer the coast from future oil spills and to clean and store water that now rushes out to sea. These proposals will focus on Florida's west coast but affect the entire Everglades watershed and potentially free up other federal and state money for projects in South and Central Florida.

The pie is potentially so huge that even a small slice would make a major impact on the re-plumbing work in the 'Glades.

"This is really the largest source of funding for ecological restoration in the history of the world," said David White of St. Petersburg, director of the Gulf restoration campaign for the National Wildlife Federation. "This is a big deal for the ecology for the Gulf of Mexico and by extension the Everglades system, which is part of that ecology."

BP and its contractors are trying to settle a federal court case in New Orleans accusing them of violating the Oil Pollution Act – which is guided by standards set by the Clean Water Act – when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 and spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Fines under the law would amount to $1,300 per barrel if the companies are guilty of simple negligence -- or $4,300 per barrel if they are guilty of gross negligence.

Environmentalists say a national commission co-chaired by former Florida U.S. Sen. and Gov. Bob Graham that investigated the disaster essentially established gross negligence, prompting them to think the total fines will reach as high as $21 billion.

A sweeping transportation bill passed by Congress on June 29 included legislation known as The Restore Act, which says 80 percent of BP's eventual fine payments must go to the five Gulf states – Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas – most affected by the spill.

The Restore Act also established a formula for distributing the money:

Pot One: 35 percent – as much as $7.35 billion -- to be divided equally among the Gulf states, or 7 percent (nearly $1.5 billion) for each. The 2011 Florida law says 75 percent of the state's share of this pot -- $1.1 billion -- must go to eight hard-hit Gulf counties, and 25 percent can go to the rest. The still works out to $367 million.

Pot Two: 30 percent – up to $6.3 billion -- to be distributed by a federal-state ecosystem restoration council comprised of six federal members and five state members.

Pot Three: 30 percent to pay for state proposals for environmental restoration and economic recovery work. These plans must be approved by the federal-state council.

Pot Four: 5 percent -- just over $1 billion -- to ecosystem monitoring and fisheries work administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientific Centers of Excellence in each Gulf state.

Money for South or Central Florida projects potentially could come from any of these pots. The council is expected to give priority to plans that promise lasting protection for the Gulf and the coastline against future spills.

These could be new proposals, but "shovel-ready projects" already designed and studied for their environmental impact – including much of the work surrounding the Everglades – could have an advantage.

Audubon of Florida, which pushed hard for passage of the Restore Act, is considering making proposals that would clean polluted water now channeled into the Gulf and store and release it when needed to nurture the Everglades.

"That would put one less stress on Lake Okeechobee, which helps everybody in South Florida," said Julie Hill-Gabriel, director of Everglades policy at Audubon of Florida.

Southeast Florida is tied to the Gulf by the Loop Current, which brings water – and potentially an oil slick -- around the Florida Keys and up to the shores of Broward and Palm Beach counties. The Everglades watershed is also interrelated, so that work along the west coast indirectly affects water projects closer to the east coast.

Using oil money in the western Everglades might allow more federal and state restoration funding to be devoted to the central and eastern Everglades.

The money could eclipse any one year's federal appropriation for Everglades restoration, usually less than $200 million. The oil money would come at no expense to taxpayers, and it would not need to be matched by the state.

"This thing has statewide impact," said Jay Liles, policy consultant for the Florida Wildlife Federation in Tallahassee. "It mostly affects the west coast, but nobody needs to exclude any of these ideas. It just has to have a nexus to the Gulf."

"Suit to force #Everglades cleansing appears near resolution" in @PBPost

By CHRISTINE STAPLETON

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 9:07 p.m. Monday, June 4, 2012

WEST PALM BEACH — A proposed settlement to a 24-year-old lawsuit that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in failed efforts to restore the Everglades was unveiled on Monday after months of private negotiations.

Melissa Meeker, the Executive Director of the South Florida Water Management District, said the draft settlement calls for an $880 million series of projects to filter out nutrient contamination and increase water flow. The projects come in addition to the more than $2 billion the district has already spent on land and other construction projects -- including $300 million spent on a reservoir before scrapping the project.

According to Meeker, the proposed settlement calls for adding two stormwater treatment areas and flow-equalization basins, which would ensure a constant flow of water to the stormwater treatment areas. The district currently manages five such treatment areas, man-made wetlands that use plants to cleanse water headed to the Everglades.

The proposed settlement sets the completion date for Everglades restoration at 2025.

"We're trying to move forward to some closure with this plan," said Governing Board Chairman Joe Collins. "I for one would rather see us spending money on construction than lawyers."

The settlement proposal contains time lines that will be enforced by incorporating them in district regulations, Meeker said.

The lawsuit that spawned the epic lawsuit began in 1988, when the federal government sued the water district and other state agencies for failing to enforce water quality standards in the Everglades.

In 1992 a federal judge approved a settlement agreement, called a consent decree, in which the District agreed to build stormwater treatment areas and meet water quality standards by 2002. When the district was unable to meet that deadline, others were set and missed. Nutrient levels in certain areas continued to exceed maximum limits -- driving the lawsuit on.

Most recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a deadline of June 6 for Florida to submit permits on behalf of the district to ensure that water quality standards are met in the five stormwater treatment areas the district currently operates. Officials of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection say that deadline will be met.

At a special meeting of the governing board on Monday, Meeker she wanted to the board to hear details about the proposed settlement from her rather than read them in the paper.

However, David Guest, attorney for EarthJustice, which represents environmental groups in the lawsuit, was guarded about his opinion of the draft settlement.

But Guest did say he was not aware that Meeker was going public with the settlement proposal on Monday. In fact, Guest -- who has been involved in the lawsuit since it was filed in 1988 -- said he was not certain that the settlement had been finalized by all parties.

"What worries me is, what the state is doing doesn't feel like collaboration," Guest said after learning of Monday's meeting.

In her 30-minute presentation, Meeker explained that the district would use some of the land it purchased from U.S. Sugar in 2010 and more than 2,000 acres of Mecca Farms that the District hopes to acquire in a land swap with the county.

The plan would also put to use two reservoirs: the L-8 Reservoir, a 15 billion gallon reservoir with a $217 million pricetag and water unfit for drinking; and the A1 Reservoir, which the district stopped building after spending $300 million.

As for money, Meeker said the district has $220 million set aside in reserves and would rely on money raised through property taxes and state appropriations for the remainder.

Despite the optimism at Monday's board meeting, the proposed settlement faces many hurdles. It must be approved by the EPA, the district's Governing Board, a federal judge and environmental groups.

christine_stapleton@pbpost.com

"Florida unveils new #Everglades restoration plan" in @sunsentinel

$1.5 billion proposal aims to clean up water pollution
 

June 5, 2012|By Andy Reid, Sun Sentinel

A new Everglades restoration deal disclosed Monday proposes to clean up water pollution and resolve decades of federal legal fights, with a more than $1.5 billion public price tag.

The plan that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Monday forwarded to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seeks to correct Florida's failure to meet water-quality standards in stormwater that flows to the Everglades.

Building new water storage and treatment areas along with other improvements over more than a decade could cost about $880 million, according to the South Florida Water Management District, which leads Everglades restoration for the state. 

The full cost also includes about $700 million the district already spent on farmland and unfinished reservoirs from past sidetracked Everglades restoration projects.

If endorsed by the federal government and the courts, the deal could resolve more than 20 years of legal fights and revamp stymied Everglades restoration efforts.

"This is a very solid plan. It is scientifically based and it's affordable," said Joe Collins, chairman of the water management district board. "We certainly are committed to protecting the Everglades."

The proposal includes stricter discharge limits for water treatment areas that send water to the Everglades, with plans by 2025 to meet overdue federal water quality standards that were supposed to take effect in 2006.

Audubon of Florida and the Everglades Foundation on Monday praised the proposal as a welcome sign of progress that could benefit the environment, tourism and drinking water supplies.

"The plan is clearly a major step forward," said Eric Draper, Audubon of Florida's executive director. "We are all going to benefit (from) this."

How to pay for the new plan remains a hurdle.

Florida has already invested about $1.8 billion building 57,000 acres of stormwater treatment areas to filter polluting phosphorous from water that flows off agricultural land and into the Everglades.

Big Sugar should be paying for more of the pollution clean up costs, not taxpayers, according to the environmental group Friends of the Everglades.

"We are skeptical," group representative Albert Slap said about the terms of the proposal disclosed Monday. "We consider it a step in the right direction (but) the problem is enforceability and funding."

The proposed deal is the result of months of negotiations started by Gov. Rick Scott, who in October flew to Washington, D.C., to push for a new restoration plan.

Without a deal, Florida faces the possibility of having to enact a plan proposed by the EPA and prompted by a federal judge that calls for adding more than 40,000 acres of additional stormwater treatment areas along with other enhancements the state estimates would cost $1.5 billion.

The new state proposal

includes more than 7,000 acres of expanded stormwater treatment areas — man-made marshes intended to filter phosphorus from stormwater that flows to the Everglades.

The deal calls for building a series of reservoirs near water treatment areas to hold onto more water that is now drained away for flood control and to better regulate its flow, so that the filter marshes can be effective.

The state's plan also calls for targeting pollution "hot spots," which would mean more pollution control requirements on pockets of farmland where fertilizer runoff and other agricultural practices boost phosphorus levels.

The plan would put to use some of the 26,800 acres the district in 2010 acquired from U.S. Sugar Corp. for $197 million. Old citrus groves in Hendry County would be turned into Everglades habitat, according to the proposal.

The new water storage areas in the plan would include making use of an unfinished 16,700-acre reservoir in southwestern Palm Beach County. That stalled project already cost taxpayers about $280 million before the project was shelved while the district pursued the U.S. Sugar land deal.

Similarly, the proposal calls for redirecting the water in a $217 million rock-mine-turned-reservoir west of Royal Palm Beach to help improve Everglades water quality standards. That water was intended to go north for restoration efforts, but the district has yet to build the $60 million pumps needed to deliver the water to the Loxahatchee River.

The $880 million in new costs could come from $220 million the district has in reserves, $290 million projected from property tax revenue from expected new growth as well as money from the Legislature, according to the district.

The EPA has about a month to review the state's proposed permit changes for water quality standards. State officials face upcoming court hearings June 25 and July 2, where they are supposed to show progress in restoration efforts.

More details are needed to justify the potential cost, said Barbara Miedema, vice president of the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida.

"How much more money are we going to spend to get how much more benefit?" Miedema asked.

abreid@tribune.com, 561-228-5504 or Twitter@abreidnews.com