A recent guest column regarding the upcoming decision by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on bear hunting has put an interesting spin on the issue.
George Warthen, chief conservation officer for FWC, appears to argue that the hunt will save the bears from the effects of urban sprawl.
“Bears have expanded their occupied range from 17% to 51% since 1992 and while we have enough habitat to support them now, we expect that to change in the future as bear and human populations continue to grow.” he writes.
Let that sink in a minute.
Put another way, it is saying lightly controlled urban, suburban and rural sprawl is increasing encroachment into occupied bear habitat provides the justification for the hunt.
The problem with that argument is the area he cites in the eastern Panhandle that contains an estimated 26% of the state’s bear population but only 3% of the state’s human population. About half of that is in and around Tallahassee.
Florida’s population is increasing in many parts of the state, but it does not seem to be happening in bear country that much. In other parts of Florida the picture is different.
It would be great to suggest, as many have, that more compact growth patterns would save wildlife and wildlife habitat, but our so-called leaders in Tallahassee have pretty much forbidden such crazy thinking.
Just this year the Legislature passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that prohibited enactment of tougher growth regulations, the latest in a downward path that began in the Rick Scott administration to dismantle Florida’s strong growth management laws.
What’s left of the former Florida Department of Community Affairs now resides in a cubicle or some such diminished space somewhere in the Florida Department of Commerce with no enforcement authority and little staff.
The other argument Mr. Warthen makes is that culling the populations of bears or any other declared game species is simply good wildlife management to prevent overpopulation, which technically could occur if more habitat encroachment were allowed.
Besides you get a bear skin rug for your den and some bear meat for the freezer, he added.
Meanwhile, he admits that the issue of human-bear conflicts involving unsecured trash and other attractions remains unresolved and is unrelated to the hunt though those issues were raised to justify the earlier hunt and legislation that allows people to kill bears if they feel threatened.
Add to that the passage of the constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to hunt is also being used as further justification, accompanied by the right to use dogs to pursue bears in some circumstances, which was not allowed in the last hunt.
Sierra opposed the amendment because it was too open-ended and would lead to what we are witnessing now.,
We hate to say we told you so, but we told you so.

Polk County commissioners seemed poised earlier this year to get more serious about flooding in some of the most flood pone areas of the county.
Following that direction, county staffers put together a change in the county’s development regulations that would raise the standards for how homes are built (or rebuilt) in what they call stressed or closed basins.
These are places toward where the stormwater runoff from hurricanes or just heavy thunderstorms flows and hits a dead end.
There were plenty of images in the newspapers and on television since the last hurricane season to illustrate what happened.
The proposed regulations required larger retention areas and greater consideration of the impact of upstream development and other requirements. Anyone looking at the effects of substandard stormwater management rules in Polk County over the years might agree such regulations were long overdue.
Those new regulations were approved unanimously by the Polk County Planning Commission April 2 and forwarded to the County Commission.
The County Commission delayed consideration of the new regulations three times before finally agreeing to withdraw them this week.
It seems they were waiting to see whether Gov. Ron DeSantis would sign legislation that was approved during this year’s regular session that dealt with post-hurricane development actions by local governments in Florida.
Polk officials said they had lobbied against including inland counties like Polk, but were unpersuasive, it seems.
The bill, whose provisions were retroactive to last August prohibits the approval of any growth plan or development changes that are “more restrictive or burdensome” (on developers.)
DeSantis signed the bill June 26.
After the rules were withdrawn. planner Erik Peterson said it is possible the administrative reviews of new developments might deal with the problem, but if you look at the fine print in the bill, it also seems that tougher reviews by county engineers and other staff are not allowed either.
What has given local officials pause is that the bill also makes it easier for any developer or property owner who doesn’t like what local officials are requiring to deal with flooding or anything else to sue and to collect their legal fees from the taxpayers if they prevail.
Another hurricane season has begun.
Keep some dry stationery handy so if your new home floods, you can send thank you notes to your legislators and the governor.
It’s the least you can do.

For people hardy enough for summer through hikes in this part of Florida, a construction project may delay some outings.
The South Florida Water Management District announced maintenance work on the S-65A structure on the Kissimmee River will close a section of the Florida National Scenic Trail July 14 through Oct. 24.
The boat lock is located near the boundaries of Kicco Wildlife Management Area, the Avon Park Air Force Range and Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park.
The work will also affect boat access along this section of the river.

A cooperative agreement among the Department of Defense, the US Department of Agriculture and Conservation Florida has secured a conservation easement on a 1,000-acre ranch in southern Highlands County, WUSF reports.
The ranch is adjacent to Archbold Biological Station south of Lake Placid and is a location of several documented sightings of Florida panthers.
The easement will allow ranching to continue without being threatened by conversion to more intense land uses, such as development.
Florida panthers are known to disperse from their core habitat in southwest Florida along the Lake Wales Ridge and the Peace and Kissimmee River corridors.
Some find their way to the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern in northern Polk and southern Lake counties, which is a documented hub in a network of wildlife corridors in Florida.
Those travels may be expanding.
State officials recently discovered the remains of a road-killed Florida panther that was struck and killed while trying to cross Interstate 75 near Wesley Chapel in Pasco County.

Gov. Ron DeSantis had an opportunity support a measure long-sought by Sierra and other environmental advocates to restore the Ocklawaha River to a free-flowing stream.
But noooooooo! as the late John Belushi used to say.
He caved to the status quo and the dam that created a reservoir that buried active springs and barricades the last 13 miles of the historic waterway will remain.
Legislators had approved a $6.25 million appropriation to begin work to dismantle this anachronism from the days when structural water-management projects ruled the day, but DeSantis vetoed it.
I guess we will have to wait to see whether his successor is more enlightened.

As the number of sites for which the Polk County Commission has agreed to pursue land deals under the Enviornmental Lands Program increases, the options for partnerships to stretch the local tax dollars is decreasing, as details of the recently approved state budget have emerged.
The budget is still under review by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his staff, but here is where things stand now.
The Legislature proposed $250 million for the Rural and Family Lands Protection program, which helps to fund conservation easements. Conservation easements keep the land in private hands but prevents intense development.
This works for many rural landowners who want to continue working the land without dealing with the financial pressure to sell out.
Polk’s program accommodates those kinds of deals.
But in other cases, the outright purchase of the property is a better option and this is where the problem lies.
The Legislature approved a measly $18 million for the Florida Forever program–it was $229 million in the previous budget– and nothing for the Florida Communities Trust program, both of which have been used extensively in past partnerships.
To put that in perspective, the amount of money budgeted for environmental land purchases just for Polk and surrounding counties totals roughly $42.5 million.
If you extend that figure statewide for all of the local, voter-approved programs, how minuscule the state’s proposed Florida Forever funding is.
It is also worth mentioning that a constitutional amendment approved by voters and supported by Sierra and other environmental groups was supposed to have provided more funds for the Florida Forever program. However, the Florida Legislature found ways to worm out of it and for reasons that defy the average person’s understanding was upheld in court.

The Ocklawaha River once flowed unimpeded to the St. Johns River, but that all changed decades ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to build a dam blocking the final 13-mile section.
For decades river advocates have been pressing state officials to undo the damage.
This year the proposed state budget contains $6.25 million to begin the job.
Sierra Club and other environmental organizations are urging Gov. Ron DeSantis to leave the appropriation intact.
There continues to be lobbying from other interest groups interested in preserving the status quo of a fishing lake called the Rodman Reservoir, despite the fact that it flooded a good portion of the river floodplain and capped the flow of 10 springs.
The river’s watershed is extensive. much of it beginning in Polk County via the formation of a creek system in the southern portion of the Green Swamp Area of State Concern.
The creeks flow slowly through the sawgrass marsh north of Lake Lowery. and other lakes in the Haines City-Lake Alfred area covering more than 100 square miles before reaching Lake Louisa in Lake County and from there forming the Palatlakaha River, the Ocklawaha’s main tributary.
As many of you know, the dam is the legacy of an ill-conceived engineering project called the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which President Richard Nixon finally halted in 1971.
It was a project that had been discussed in one form or another even before Florida became a state in 1845 as a way of creating a shortcut for freight that avoided what were then the poorly mapped reefs in the Florida Keys.
The project also came at a time when the prevailing water management practices in Florida involved building structures–dams, canals, reservoirs–to deal with issues often better served by purchasing and preserving natural areas.
It would be a tribute to our better understanding of proper water management today to urge Gov. Ron DeSantis to support this portion of the proposed budget.