"Popular beach proves essential to Florida's bird breeding" @jax_just_in

Monique Borboen for Shorelines

Despite Hurricane Debby’s severe impact on coastal wildlife on Florida’s Gulf Coast, the state’s royal tern population has increased thanks to a successful breeding season at Huguenot Memorial Park.

“Huguenot is a truly unique habitat. Dozens of species of birds have relied on this one beach for survival for generations,” said Monique Borboen, an Audubon Florida policy associate.

Borboen said, thanks to a dedicated park naturalist assisted by volunteer bird stewards, progress is being made in protecting this special place.

“Residents of northeast Florida are fortunate to have such an important and beautiful bird habitat so close to home,” she said.

Huguenot Memorial Park is the only breeding colony of royal terns on Florida’s Atlantic Coast. This year, the colony fledged more than 2,000 royal tern chicks. These young birds will go a long way in helping statewide populations recover from the rain, wind and storm surge caused from a devastating Hurricane Debby in June. The storm made landfall at the height of Florida’s beach-bird nesting season, destroying the eggs and chicks of many beach-nesting birds on the Gulf Coast.

“Huguenot is a perfect example of why multiple breeding sites are the best defense for beach birds against natural or manmade disasters,” said Borboen. “Hurricanes are a common and natural occurrence in Florida, that’s why nature doesn’t like to put all her ‘eggs in one basket.’ One strong storm has the potential to devastate miles of shoreline habitat and cause the destruction of multiple breeding bird colonies.”

Huguenot Memorial Park is considered by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as the most important seabird breeding colony site on Florida’s east coast. Located at the mouth of the St. Johns River, this coastal habitat hosts a wealth of declining species, providing vital stopover habitat for imperiled red knots, federally designated critical wintering habitat for threatened piping plovers, a state-designated critical wildlife area for one of Florida’s few laughing gulls and royal tern colonies, nesting habitat for marine turtles as well as historic nesting habitat for declining American oystercatchers, gull-billed terns, least terns, black skimmers and Wilson’s plovers.

"Water managers releasing water from Lake Okeechobee to ease dike concerns" @pbpost

Water managers releasing water today from Lake Okeechobee to ease dike concerns
By: Christine Stapleton

With Lake Okeechobee almost 3 feet higher than a month ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began releasing water from the lake this morning to ensure that its 75-year-old dike could safely weather another storm.

“Tropical Storm Isaac provided a classic example of how quickly the lake can rise,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Greco, the Corps’ Deputy District Commander in South Florida. Because the water level can rise six times faster than water can be discharged, “We’ve got to manage it in a manner where we have enough storage for the remaining two months of hurricane season, have enough water for the dry season and be sensitive to the delicate ecosystems in each of the estuaries,” Greco said.

The Corps is responsible for maintaining the Herbert Hoover Dike and managing Lake Okeechobee water levels. To do so, it must also balance the needs of flood control, public safety and navigation. The preferred water levels are between 12.5 and 15.5 feet. Levels above that can threaten the integrity of the dike. On Tuesday the lake stood at 15.1 feet.

Releases will be made to the Caloosahatchee River and St. Lucie Estuary, ecologically vital water bodies that provide habitat for plants and wildlife threatened by changes in salinity levels. Although no water has been released from the lake since Isaac’s record rainfall, salinity levels have already dropped in the St. Lucie estuary, said Mark Perry, Executive Director of the Florida Oceanographic Society.

Storm water runoff from the C-44 canal and the C-23 and C-24 agricultural canals have lowered salinity levels near the Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart to 6 parts per thousand, Perry said. The normal range is 24 parts per thousand. If levels drop below 5 parts per thousand for more than two weeks, the area’s oyster beds — revived by recent restoration programs — could be threatened, Perry said.

“We’re all kind of keeping track of what’s going on,” Perry said, referring to environmentalists who monitor the estuary. Without man-made wetlands or other storage south of the lake to handle storm water runoff, damaging releases to the estuaries will continue. “The Corps has no other place to put the water,” he said.