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Ray Ashton Receives Award from The Environmental & Land Use Committee of the Florida Bar
Ray Ashton, President of the Ashton Biodiversity Research & Preservation
Institute, Inc. and one of the founders of the activist group The Gopher
Tortoise Conservation Imitative was awarded the 2008 Citizen's Award at the
14th Annual Public Interest Environmental Conference held at the University
of Florida Law School on February 29, 2008.
The award was presented for "outstanding contributions on behalf of Florida
environmental and land use policy". Some of the contributions that Ashton
has made include work with local county governments in developing policies
that support local conservation of gopher tortoises and their habitats.
Over the past two years, he has worked with 17 counties to establish
programs that will help protect tortoises. Meanwhile over the past ten
years, he has been a strong voice attempting to change the old policies of
the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission from Incidental Take to
one of long term management and protection through up listing the tortoise
to threatened status in Florida and to encourage relocation of tortoises to
well managed and protected lands. He has proposed reasonable financing of
tortoise management that would insure perpetual monitoring and management
for generations to come. He and members of the GTCI proposed a tax
exemption to landowners that maintain natural lands. Today farmers cannot
maintain their agricultural exemptions on these lands and pay the highest
taxes on them. Thanks to the Florida Wildlife Federation and other
stakeholders, this tax bill and many changes have been brought forward to
create an entirely different way of doing conservation for a species.
All though Ashton is not totally pleased with the current rules being
presented to the FWC Commission in April, he supports the direction they
are going and hopes that the FWC will follow up on promises to strengthen
what is being presented in the near future. If they do not then we will
see a continued decline of this species and the need for federal listing. |
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