The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recently authorized a deviation from its guidelines for relocating gopher tortoises because of high demand at available gopher tortoise recipient sites. Some conservationists are now calling for the state-listed species to be added to the Endangered Species Act to earn federal protections before it goes locally extinct.
The Gopher Tortoise’s Future Can’t Be Left to Chance
By Elise Bennett, Center for Biologicial Diversity
In late 2021 the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission quietly issued an emergency order that permitted staff to deviate from the agency’s own science-based standards meant to ensure relocated gopher tortoise populations have a fighting chance at success.
Critically, the order — issued without consulting independent tortoise experts — enabled developers to continue demolishing habitat at breakneck speed, even while the agency was running out of places to put tortoises plucked from the path of the bulldozers.
And this isn’t just about gopher tortoises. It’s also about the hundreds of species that make tortoise burrows their homes. It’s about the pine sandhills, flatwoods, coastal dunes and all the wild places that make Florida so special and that are vanishing before our eyes.
While it’s good that the commission is identifying more places to relocate tortoises, the emergency order makes clear that Florida wildlife officials don’t have a handle on the sprawl that is rapidly pushing the species toward extinction.
What we do have a handle on is the alarming rate of the gopher tortoise’s decline. The tortoises have already lost more than 80% of their natural habitat to sprawl and agriculture. The remaining habitat is scattered in fragments across the species’ range.
What happens to the remaining habitat will very likely make the difference between existence and extinction for one of the state’s most beloved reptiles.
While the agency’s tortoise relocation program is beneficial and humane, it has a fatal flaw: It doesn’t address the underlying threat of cumulative habitat loss and fragmentation. While the program aims for “no net loss of tortoises,” the permitting process itself results in a net loss of tortoise habitat. That means the state’s plan is attempting to cram the same number of tortoises into a smaller and smaller total area of habitat. This is not sustainable.
The habitat loss is particularly concerning because Florida wildlife officials are not sure how much tortoise habitat is left and, more importantly, how much habitat this already imperiled critter needs to survive and recover. Without this critical information, the commission could give the greenlight to a development that commits the tortoise to extinction without ever realizing the species’ fate has been sealed.
The emergency order also highlights another critical problem — the agency’s willingness to bow to developers. The commission plugged the order as a temporary and “proactive approach to reducing potential violations of state law,” citing concerns that developers would opt to violate the law if it became too difficult to obtain permits to relocate tortoises.
It’s deeply troubling that despite the tortoise’s dramatic decline, when faced with developers who would violate the law, the commission opted to lower the bar rather than enforce its own established, science-based conservation permitting guidelines.
Whether the gopher tortoise, and all the species that depend on it, will have enough habitat to survive into the future simply cannot be left up to chance.
That’s why the Center for Biological Diversity has advocated to list the tortoise under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), the world’s strongest wildlife protection law. With an unmatched history of preventing extinction and supporting species recovery, the ESA confers powerful protections for habitat that are essential to the survival and recovery of imperiled species.
In the meantime, the commission must strengthen protections at the state level. First, it must rescind the emergency order and ensure the penalties for violating gopher tortoise laws effectively deter wrongdoers.
Second, it must ascertain the tortoise’s habitat needs and proactively ensure there will be enough for the species to survive long-term. That can be accomplished through direct means like habitat acquisition and indirect means like permit review and recommendations.
There’s still time to secure a future for gopher tortoises and the ecosystems they share with hundreds of other creatures. But it will require commonsense, on-the-ground actions and a renewed commitment to upholding our wildlife protection laws.
Anything less will not only fail to prevent the extinction of these charismatic tortoises who have made their homes in the coastal regions of the Southeast for two million years, it will accelerate their demise.
A native Floridian, Elise Bennett is a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity in St. Petersburg.
FWC Responds
Gopher tortoise conservation is a priority for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and staff are taking steps to ensure humane and responsible relocations take place as development increases throughout the state.
FWC recently issued Executive Order (EO 21-27) authorizing temporary deviations from the Gopher Tortoise Permitting Guidelines (Guidelines). These temporary changes address the current high demand for placements at gopher tortoise recipient sites. The Executive Order, which is now in effect, does not provide any blanket authorizations nor does it reduce or eliminate the need for permitting. The EO provides staff the ability to deviate from the Guidelines under the circumstances outlined in the EO. All approved alternatives under the EO will be temporarily authorized by FWC as a permit condition. Any activities occurring without a permit from FWC that impact tortoises or their burrows may be a violation of state law.
Permitting for the relocation of gopher tortoises from development sites is one of many conservation tools used to achieve the objectives of the Gopher Tortoise Management Plan. The suite of conservation actions provided in the Management Plan have worked successfully to minimize the loss of tortoises, increase and improve tortoise habitat, restore depleted populations, and maintain the gopher tortoise’s function as a keystone species. The Gopher Tortoise Permitting Guidelines are a key component of the Management Plan and govern the relocation of tortoises from lands slated for development or other projects that may impact tortoises or their burrows.
The permitted relocation of all gopher tortoises from development sites has been required sin/ce 2008, when the gopher tortoise was listed as state-Threatened. Tortoises are often relocated to permitted gopher tortoise recipient sites which provide security for the gopher tortoise and its habitat. To date, 45 Long-term Protected Recipient Sites conserving more than 75,000 acres of habitat have been placed under a perpetual conservation easement and permitted to receive gopher tortoises.
Permitting for development sites has increased significantly over the past few years, increasing the demand for recipient site capacity. Nearly 3,000 gopher tortoise relocation permits have been issued in 2021 alone, representing about 20% of all permits issued since 2008. The significant increase in permitting throughout the state has led to recipient site managers often being unable to accommodate the increased demand for relocation, leading to shortages in available reservations and increased permitting costs.
The Executive Order supports implementation of the Guidelines to protect the health and safety of tortoises while ensuring long-term success of the program. The EO is in place for 90 days, beginning on November 18th. The need to extend the Order, and the temporary provisions provided therein, will be evaluated towards the end of this 90-day period. All permit applications and associated projects will be reviewed individually and any deviations from the Guidelines will be considered on a case-by-case basis, depending on the project’s specifications, the site-specific need, and the availability of gopher tortoise reservations or recipient site capacity at that time.
The EO temporarily reduces mitigation fees for relocation to recipient sites that have enforceable protections, but which may not be under perpetual conservation easement. The EO also extends the ability to move tortoises to recipient sites more than 100 miles north or south of their original location. This option was already available in the Guidelines under certain circumstances. The EO makes this option more broadly available. Finally, the EO authorizes staff to determine if other temporary relocation options are warranted for individual project applications. The EO does not provide blanket authorizations, nor does it waive existing rules.
The Executive Order is a proactive approach to reducing potential violations of state law. Concerns over delays in obtaining recipient site reservations may increase the potential for project activities to occur without a permit. The deviations authorized by the EO provide flexibility within the Guidelines to ensure gopher tortoises are safely and humanely relocated out of harm’s way when there is no practical option within the current guidelines, given the availability of reservations or site capacity.
For more information about gopher tortoises, visit MyFWC.com/GopherTortoise.
Published January 26, 2020