Gopher tortoises
Gopher tortoises no longer buried
alive, but will relocation save them?
Florida's approach to saving gopher tortoises from extinction a decade
ago allowed developers to bury the docile reptiles alive in their burrows in
return for what critics called "blood money" that was used to buy and
protect tortoise habitat elsewhere.
Thousands of tortoises a year were sentenced to death at the height of
Florida's building boom, with Orange County leading the way. Opposition from
environmentalists and animal-rights advocates finally brought a halt to the
state's "pay to pave" program in 2007 — just as the nationwide
housing slump and Great Recession brought a halt to most new construction,
anyway.
The
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allows developers to move
tortoises that are blocking construction just a short distance to an
undisturbed area of the same development tract. Most of the time, though,
developers pay the owners of designated ranches, timberland and other largely
natural landscapes to take in tortoises from construction sites.
To get paid for adopting these long-living land dwellers, those
landowners must permanently designate their acreage as green space and ensure
it remains healthy — not overgrown with brush, for example — as tortoise
habitat.
a $1,000 payment to the owner of the relocation site.
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