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The Need to Establish A Tortoise Relocation Plan
At the last Stakeholder’s Meeting an announcement was made that the Take policy was to be no more. This was met with great enthusiasm, including my own. However, we all know that if that change took effect today and the test rule was also no more, there would be a train wreck in the permitting office as well as with stakeholders throughout the state. I assumed that one of the reasons why the interim URTD position was required was, in part, to keep the expectations down for an immediate ban.
I would like to address this again with the FWC, now with the insights gained from our experiments and with input from the general public. Here are the issues as we see them and some recommendations.
INFORM LANDOWNERS ON RELOCATION
After Take became a policy and the URTD scare was in full swing, the old FWC set out to discourage tortoise relocation to all publicly owned conservation lands. This included WMD, DOF, DEP, federal lands and county conservation lands.
However, according to the Picayune State Forest, the current moratorium on the relocation ban has become the director’s current policy, due to recent FWC requests. This is a good thing, since there are probably fewer problems with organizing proper relocation on these sites than was true in the past. All of the above agencies should be notified that relocations which are properly carried out can be encouraged as part of a well-planned Assurance Colony Program.
In fact, those lands that should play a key role in the Heritage Collection level should be notified of the possibility of relocations, although they should refrain from accepting tortoises until an MOU with FWC is in place. Getting the word out is the beginning of working with the key folks and establishing programs that fit the conditions within a county or region.
- Proposed: Preliminary Assurance Colony Announcement and Description
All others (i.e., those with land that has not been designated conservation) should be encouraged to use their lands according to a county-by-county plan that establishes all levels of the Assurance Colony program. This would allow people and communities to sustain both individual and small groups of tortoises for the purposes of education and enjoyment. Such a notice should explain how the agencies can both offset the costs of management and get guidance for their efforts through FWC and conservation groups.
- Proposed: Relocation Rules and Guidelines
Based on studies done on the long term by both ourselves and others, our Institute (Ashton Biodiversity Research & Preservation Institute) has proposed a series of recommendations that ensure successful relocation of tortoises. Studies indicate clearly what factors work and which do not, with limited flexibility (Tuberville et al. 2005). These factors include time, densities of tortoises and other issues. We offer these recommendations, as well as some of the supporting papers from the International Roundtable on Chelonian Relocation (2000). The primary methods are outlined in Ashton and Ashton ( 2004).
Key components of the research include:
- Recipient site issues. These have been resolved as they relate to the need for restocking.
- Forage, measured as acceptable or better.
- Actual relocation sites were enclosed for no less than 6 months. If released between 3 and 4 months site fidelity declines from 30 to 50% or more.
- Monitoring of both tortoises and habitat. This is key to good reactive management.
- All tortoises considered in the count toward reaching biological goals are already on site, and monitoring and management follows the proposed guidelines. If the site is being restocked, then the minimum monitoring and management must be met.
- On Site Relocation
By evaluating the FWC agreements on most on site projects from 1994 and before, we know that most were not monitored or that they failed. On site relocations require willing individuals, a suitable site and conditions that will support tortoise populations for educational and recreational purposes. Relocations should be handled by willing local governments in conjunction with a statewide-to-local tortoise conservation volunteer program. On site programs should be incorporated with a local recipient site that takes the single tortoise off the road or out of the yard being developed.
- Economics
Establishing a conservation-based relocation program for the remaining tortoises that are in lands slated for development or agricultural change is going to cost money. It will also require a totally different way of looking at mitigation and relocation, as well as partnerships across the board.
- Income
Currently, a great deal of money is involved in tortoise mitigation but little goes to conservation. If FWC is going to have the land that is needed for conservation-based relocation it will require the following:
- Five or Fewer Tortoises
The individual landowner who wants to get rid of a tortoise legally only has to fill out a permit application, send it off and then receive the permit. There is no fee. Most landowners do not even go through this permit process. The tortoise when collected is most often left in harm’s way in degraded habitat. This has no conservation value.
In this way, the tortoise is not protected and we cost the tax payer at the same time. There should be a fee to get a permit, and the permit should either allow for the tortoise to be left behind or to be moved by a trained individual to a recipient site. Such a program should likely be handled by local government since, in nearly every case, they are the only branch that sends inspectors onto a site.
This is not the place to discuss details but the fees should be set to cover real costs, including management of the recipient site.
- Relocation fees.
Currently there are no fees for obtaining a relocation permit. There are no site visits (unless it is a DRI or some other large site), nor are there site evaluations. There is no evaluation of the data provided by consultants, and rarely are proposed recipient sites evaluated.
Currently fees are paid by the donor site owner to the consultant or by the developer to the donor site. The fees are contractual, and pay for: burrow surveys or for trapping for URTD testing (which can be the most costly), the preparation of permit applications (which includes finding a recipient site), and the actual relocation from the donor site. There are often set-up fees, especially if the recipient site has voluntarily followed guidelines for monitoring forage, site prep, fencing and tortoise monitoring during the relocation.
Another fee is a set cost, usually based on the local market rate. This fee may jump from around $350 in north Florida to thousands of dollars per tortoise in central to south Florida. It is usually based on the cost of the land and the consultant’s cut.
The fees per tortoise run into the thousands of dollars per tortoise, especially when testing is required and there are more than ten tortoises. However, it should be noted that in all cases relocation is far cheaper than relocation on or off site except in time. Most of the time, the cost is about 60% of that of take.
- Mitigation Fees
Money lost Under Current Situation
The effort to conserve tortoises has been losing -- with each acre and each tortoise that has been lost. And the methods of determining the fees charged are not based on the costs to conserve.
We estimate that, in good scrub habitat, the maximum population density is only .8 tortoises per acre. The average good-to-excellent sandhill or pine flatwoods rarely contains more than 2 tortoises per acre. However, many natural habitats have been reduced to a handful of acres, with as many as 20 tortoises per acre. In other words we have the tortoises but we have lost the potential for replacing the acreage that the tortoises were living in.
Separating Land Loss and Replacement from Tortoises and Relocation
- Under the No Take Rule, donor sites owners should be responsible for the full cost of relocating tortoises. See recommendations on changing the cash flow of this effort. Other than paying for a tortoise survey, mapping and letter application, there is no cost for the destruction of the tortoises.
- Currently a fee is paid directly to FWC, based on a formula with a cap that does not represent current cost of land anywhere in the state. In some areas of the state, far more developers ignore the permit requirement than get permits. This is due to the low odds of getting caught and the minimal fee if one does get caught. Fees have done little to support tortoise or land conservation in most counties.
- Conservation Lands Programs
Tax payer incentives, at both the county and state level, fund the purchase and management of conservation lands. Many Florida Forever lands are managed by FLDOF, which creates silviculture as a major part of many lands that have been obtained fee simple. Those lands purchased as conservation easements usually allow for some form of agricultural or silviculture activities. These are key points in our discussion of creating a plan to encourage relocation.
Many conservation lands programs are bogged down by restrictions that do not allow them to purchase lands based on fair market value. When they do, they are paying many times the cost per acre than they would have a few years ago.
Florida does not have a conservation tax exemption. Under Florida law the highest taxes are paid if you have a conservation easement on your land, but also live in a house on the land. In addition, there is no means of obtaining an agriculture exemption without decreasing the conservation value and biodiversity, (because an agriculture exemption demands the set up of a conventional agricultural enterprise). If you take an exemption, and are paid a higher dollar for the exemption because there is a high conservation value on the property, it takes only a few short years for the taxes to catch up to the boom values of today.
NOW WHAT?
How does all this relate to getting the land needed for relocation? There are two questions that local stakeholders ask. The first is: what is the conservation value of current conservation methods? And second: how do these methods effect me and future generations in terms of hassle, time, costs and income, as well as having natural habitat, tortoises and other wildlife? These are the concerns of citizens, heads of county agencies, consultants, wildlife advocates, land managers, and politicians.
THE NEW ECONOMICS OF TORTOISE CONSERVATION
We need to consider the costs of managing tortoise conservation from top to bottom. Where do we logically obtain the funds to enforce protection? Where do we get the funds for land to relocate tortoises to and how do we pay for monitoring and management of these lands in perpetuity? This is reaching to the very soul of the Goals and Objectives of tortoise conservation.
Splitting up the Permitting Pie
- Single Family developments- Five or Fewer
The five or fewer should be handled by willing County officials. The cost of the permit for managing the tortoises found on a property including inspection, removal, and recipient site should be established by local government. It should be noted that in many areas of the state where there are still a large number of tortoises, the fees would likely drop. Also various programs could be put into place that would give alternatives, like a list of people, schools, parks, etc that would want tortoises. Then the cost would be cut to the permit (covering administrative costs), and even lower if there was an active volunteer and Tortoise Reserve Program. Counties would likely tie this into land clearing permits thus reducing the costs even further. There is a great deal of conservation value in this method and this could well save more tortoises from take than any other part of the program.
- Large Land Development
- Incidental Take Permit (Permission to Relocate and Take Property)
- FWC would go a long way in stabilizing costs by requiring highly qualified consultant staff (identified on the permit and required to be present during the relocation). This would be a known entity and would stabilize the fee structures due to “competition of the qualified” thus no real need for a real certification process.
- It would also do a great deal to spend more time evaluating tortoise data than permit applications. This could be done by requiring an Environmental Assessment for and Incidental Take Permit (similar to FWS). There would be a fee charged for review of the data and site inspections. These fees would be based actual administrative costs based on acreage of habitat, not how many tortoises.
- Once the applicant satisfies the FWC and local government and citizens that the killing of any tortoise or other protected species was unavoidable, they would then receive a true permit that would excuse them from an accidental breaking of the law and to move them to an approved relocation site.
- Take of Habitat
Under this scenario, the estimated cost for mitigation would be based on one acre of scrub for scrub habitat. If in fact the trade is for Bahia pasture then the exchange would be based on two acres to one of scrub. The value and rarity of the habitat being lost is what counts. Of course if one is wanting more land because the tortoises being displaced is so great, then the deal may be better for bahia pasture in that it can grow and hold more tortoise per acre and is cheap to manage.
Consortiums
There are more ways to swap land, development rights, and other ways to get around paying for the land and getting into a considerable loss of habitat per deal as we have now. Also, it would appear that many developers like the idea of working out trades within their area, even relocations to sites bought by others. In these cases, the FWC or the local government could be responsible for managing the deal (or FWS if there are federal species involved as well). There would be a fee for handling the arrangements, not unlike what Nature Conservancy is doing for local conservation lands programs now. This approach allows for a great deal of proper flexibility on all sides. The idea here is to avoid on site mitigation and working on anything that is under 25 to 50 acres in size unless it is connected to other conservation lands suitable for tortoises. Deals would be within counties or nearby unless a Heritage Site was being created and a projects input could help make it happen.
- Creating Management Funds
Many of our conservation uplands requiring management are like a football with a slow leak. In 20 years or so, their suitability for tortoise habitat will be nearly gone. Yet the very first thing to go in budgets is the loss of monitoring which makes us blind to some of the key issues and ultimately when funds do come available for management, the catch up will cost far more per acre than the original prescribed burns. We believe that the answer to this can and should be the ability of developers to pay into a trust which is quasi-tied to a nonprofit organization that will be designed to provide habitat management in critical situations, while having primary responsibilities of education and training of professionals, general public, educators and to create and sustain volunteers throughout the state working with all aspects of the Gopher Tortoise conservation effort. This nonprofit could possibly go back and change some mitigation efforts like many of the on site situations and move tortoises to other sites and work out deals for the land on site with Home Owner’s Associations. The funding would come from a certain percentage of mitigation costs and specific funding from the Trust. Some funding would also come from litigation related to tortoise conservation.
In some counties such as Collier County, a number of panhandle and mid-state counties, there are ample conservation lands available for restocking. In these cases, there is a dire need to establish good monitoring and management plans for these lands. In some cases where there is no budget or staff, they these lands would be managed based on where the land was in accordance to the Assurance Colony Program and available budget. This type of program will promote local involvement in the conservation lands and conservation in general.
CONCLUSION
A great deal of what is suggested here needs to be on the calendar and alluded to when FWC begins the campaign to open lands to relocation. Because of some rules and how they are couched in various laws that cycle and budgets, etc, it will take one or two years to get things in place for the change.
As someone once said, all we have to fear is fear itself. This just about turns over every aspect of tortoise (and possibly other protected species) conservation work in FWC. For us on the outside, it would appear that many of the new ways would put people back into working for and on conservation, not permitting, enforcement and demanding efforts that have no conservation value but only make one follow some outdated guideline with no conservation value.
It is beginning to appear that county governments are rising to the occasion and are setting many things into motion that relate to the new approaches to land and species conservation. It became very clear that many were well on their way at the 2002 Environmental Law Conference, at the University of Florida. Since that time, we have been working with many local officials to try different ways to approach the new issues that come along with massive urbanization. However, they cannot do this alone nor can FWC. It will require a cooperation of the stakeholders to succeed.
We are here to participate and help anyway we can to beat the loss of habitat and have tortoises and their habitat for future generations.
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