A license to kill tortoises-- Endagered species buried alive in Florida (cross-posted in GD)

[piedmont]

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/07/State/A_license_to_kill_tor.shtml

Workers buried the 30-pound gopher tortoise on a Lee County construction site, its shell crushed by a backhoe. Two weeks later, despite a spinal injury, the determined tortoise dug its way out. The remarkable resurrection led a wildlife expert to nickname the 16-inch-long tortoise "Phoenix." It was the largest gopher tortoise ever found in the wild. It died last week.

For 16 years, Florida officials have allowed developers to bury tortoises alive and pave over their burrows, in exchange for paying money into a fund to buy land for tortoises elsewhere. Because of their low metabolic rate, tortoises can take months to suffocate under convenience store parking lots, shopping centers and new subdivisions.

By this year, the state's pay-to-pave program had issued permits to bury more than 94, 000 tortoises. Now the species is in sharp decline, and tortoise experts blame the permitting program. "It's a massive loss of tortoises, " said George Heinrich of Heinrich Ecological Services in St. Petersburg and a former co-chairman of the Gopher Tortoise Council, a group of biologists concerned about the animal's future.

State wildlife officials have decided to end the program by July 31, prompting a rush by developers to beat the deadline. Up to a dozen applications a week have been sent in for the last permits to kill tortoises, according to Rick McCann, who runs the permit program for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "There's still an amount of insecurity and unsureness that people have, so they want to get permitted now, " McCann said. "We're well ahead of last year's pace."


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This is a fucking outrage. I can't believe they can be permitted to do this instead of moving them. Hell, there are enough people out there who care about these critters that the developers wouldn't even have to do the moving themselves.


GD thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=965785&mesg_id=965785

[Debau2005]

1. This is outrageous

In what alternative universe would ANYBODY think this was ok?

This line was the most disturbing to me, "prompting a rush by developers to beat the deadline."

[flvegan]

2. I wish I could go as in-depth here

as I could elsewhere. You know, an activist that was working on the gopher tortoise issue in N Florida had a dead one strung up on his mailbox? They're "dead" serious here.

They also flood the burrow with gasoline and burn them (out...according to them).