Nearly two decades of one of the greatest conservation travesties has come to an end. Incidental Take will essentially end on July 31, 2007. No longer will landowners be allowed to pay and entomb tortoises as they prepare lands for development. There will be some grandfathering of some permits. I was clear by the boards directions to staff that those people that do have permits that seek to relocate may be encouraged to do so by possibly refunding some of the money paid for the permit. Also FWC was told to help them find relocation sites and help anyway they can.

On a personal note, there are some folks out there that remember the great battle that took place when IT was being considered. We were told that URTD was deadly, would kill tortoises like nothing else in history. I was co-chair of GTC at the time and worked to pass this method of so called conservation. I lost a few friends and in fact I resigned into my third term as co-chair because of it. Even then it seemed wrong. Was it a simple mistake of interpreting results? Or was it a method to get bigger and greater grants?

Let this be a lesson to all of us who are trying to save something for future generations. We must be extremely cautious in the methods we use. With habitat disappearing and methods available becoming fewer all the time, we must be careful and be sure that we do not do the wrong thing again. Twelve years ago Pat and I felt that we had to know more about relocation as a tool. We began researching forage, long term movements and how to do relocation. That was successful. We co-sponsored an international roundtable to bring chelonian experts to define what we needed to know. We learned that there were not just biological and environmental concerns but we had to take into account economic and the will of the people before we could create. We now must be very cautious in what is allowed and we must understand that once we move animals, it is our moral obligation to monitor and manage them.

THE UP LISTING OF THE TORTOISE AND MANAGEMENT PLAN MOVES FORWARD

The Commission passed on the continued efforts to uplist the gopher tortoise with the final listing to be voted on in September, if the management plan is completed by that time. My comments to the Commission was to not vote for the management plan since we have not seen the third revision and that many things are not in the plan we do have and some things simply are not going to work. For example very little is there on relocations except the restriction of 2 tortoises per acre no matter what. That has halted all relocation efforts on the part of counties and private landowners. Meanwhile 3 tortoises per acre are just accepted for on site relocations with no proof. We know from our review of several years ago that more than 80% of on site relocations have been a disaster or no one has bothered to review them. The FWC staff has our recommendations based on our research (and others) to show that you can and must increase the carrying capacity to pay for creating good sites with good fencing and monitoring. There are many other things that still need to be fixed like permitting and financing relocation.

THANKS TO ALL

We want to thank all of the folks out there that have worked so hard. The Stakeholder Process has been excellent. It is frustrating at times and the god of Babble strikes occasionally and seems to have folks talking different languages. The FWC staff has been open and working very hard to change not only a management plan but an entire institution. Most importantly are the thousands of people who have demonstrated their concerns by actions locally and on the FWC. In the past, the biologists have carried the banner and little interest has been displayed by the public. The reverse is true today.