By Jeremy Cox, Naples News
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Tires and sabers are rattling anew over rugged trails that had been closed to swamp buggies and all-terrain vehicles for seven years.
Hunters are applauding the National Park Service’s decision to reopen nearly 23 miles of trails in the northwest corner of Big Cypress National Preserve. The Feb. 28 reopening came just in time for turkey hunting season in the Bear Island Unit, a patchwork of cypress swamps and prairies east of State Road 29 and north of Alligator Alley.
But environmentalists are accusing park officials of placing the demands of hunting groups ahead of the needs of Florida panthers and other wildlife. An advocacy group that had successfully sued to impose the off-roading restrictions is once again considering legal action.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is charged with protecting panthers and the lands they prowl, allowed park managers to open the trails without first studying what that might do to the big cats. That “flies in the face” of the agency’s own biological opinion on the matter, said Brian Scherf, director of the Florida Biodiversity Project.
“You can’t walk away from a biological opinion, and you can’t walk away from the Endangered Species Act,” said Scherf, whose group had successfully sued to limit off-road vehicle use.
“We’re mulling over the case to see if we’re going back to court over this,” he added.
The panther, the only known cougar subspecies living east of the Mississippi River, has been on the endangered species list since 1967. Scientists believe 80 to 100 exist in the wilderness of Southwest Florida. Bear Island, which is a leap away from the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, is a panther hot spot, experts say.
Karen Gustin, superintendent of Big Cypress, said now that the Bear Island trails are open, scientists will study how much swamp buggy traffic the fragile area can handle. In addition, researchers will study whether the big machines drive away panthers, as an earlier study suggested. But that work may not happen anytime soon because the studies lack funding.
Paul Souza, field supervisor of Fish and Wildlife’s Vero Beach office, acknowledged that those studies were supposed to be done before the trails were reopened.
“That was the original expectation, but we’re real comfortable with the approach we’re going on,” Souza said. “I think it’s safe to say we don’t believe there will be significant impacts.”
Although the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service are both part of the Interior Department, Souza said the sister agency didn’t receive special treatment.
Fish and Wildlife, he added, is always open to “new ideas” that lead to a better understanding of the biological world.
“Basically, they’re saying, ‘We’re replacing closure with monitoring,’” said Matthew Schwartz, political chair of the Broward Group of the Sierra Club.
In all, about 44 miles of primary and secondary trails now cut their way through Bear Island, up from the 25 miles that were left after the changes in 2000. Park officials also closed three miles of previously open trails.
About 1,200 people are registered to ride swamp buggies and other off-road vehicles at the preserve, preserve spokesman Bob DeGross said.
When Congress created Big Cypress in 1974, recreation was to be protected as much as the plants and animals that dwelled in the swamp, he added.
How much is too much? That is a dilemma that preserve managers are constantly grappling with.
In 1999, researchers with the University of Tennessee linked hunting season, when swamp buggy use is most prevalent, with changes in Florida panthers’ movements in Bear Island. During the hunting season panthers moved to private lands north of the preserve, the researchers found.
That annual refuge-seeking trip could become hazardous if those private lands were ever developed, the study concluded.
Environmentalists also complain that hunters had an unfair advantage during the public comment process that led up to the recent changes in Bear Island. Indeed, some hunters guided park officials through parts of Bear Island with their personal vehicles, proposing possible routes along the way.
Frank Denninger, a board member of the Big Cypress Sportsmen’s Alliance, lives in Hialeah in Miami-Dade County but says “my heart’s in Big Cypress.” The initial closure seemed arbitrary and punitive toward the nearly century-old South Florida outdoors culture, he said.
After fighting for years to see the trails reopened, he sat shotgun in a friend’s swamp buggy earlier this month on a bumpy tour of the new country.
“It was all new to me. I was like a kid in a candy store,” Denninger said.
Article Reference:
Big Cypress ATV decision raises eyebrows | naplesnews.com | Naples Daily News
