Marine Turtle Newsletter 66:34-35, © 1994
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Marine Turtle Newsletter 66:34-35, © 1994
A sea turtle nesting beach on Florida's west coast will be renourished with sand prior to each nesting season for the next 10 years under a lawsuit settlement between conservationists, state officials and homeowners pushing for a controversial beach armoring project in Sarasota County. The Sea Turtle Survival League, a Gainesville-based turtle conservation group, challenged a state permit granted in November allowing five oceanfront homeowners to build a concrete revetment in a section of beach where 21 threatened sea turtles nested during last summer's nesting season. The homeowners claimed the structure was needed to prevent erosion from destroying their homes; Sea Turtle Survival insisted that other alternatives would have fewer negative impacts on sea turtle nesting habitat. In a letter to Virginia Wetherell, head of the [Florida] Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act, advised the State that the permit could result in the "take" of a threatened species.
After Sea Turtle Survival filed its permit challenge, winter storms and unusually high tides increased the rate of beach erosion threatening the Casey Key homes, making armoring the only option to keep the homes from falling into the Gulf. "Because current state policy considers the loss of coastal property more important than the extinction of sea turtles, we had no choice but to try to reach a settlement," said David Godfrey, Sea Turtle Survival Program Director. "Unless the laws and attitudes are changed, we will keep seeing sea turtles sacrificed to save pricey oceanfront homes."
"Realizing that the rubble from collapsed homes would create a nearly equal impediment to sea turtle nesting, the Survival League pursued a resolution which would minimize adverse impacts and provide maximum habitat for sea turtle nesting," according to attorney Laura Ericson-Siegel of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which served as legal counsel to Sea Turtle Survival. Under the settlement agreement reached on 7 April 1994, a 65-foot soil- cement step revetment will be constructed on the beach in front of five homes, provided that, for the next decade, enough sand is trucked in to keep most of the armoring structure covered. The agreement further requires that only beach-compatible sand be used and that any rubble or debris caused by the revetment be removed before each sea turtle nesting season. If at least three feet of good beach sand is maintained over the structure, and if the beach is kept free of any obstructions to nesting turtles and hatchlings, sea turtles could continue to nest successfully at this site, according to Godfrey.
"We believe our challenge was successful because sea turtles are being given greater consideration in the permit conditions," Godfrey said. "Ten years worth of beach renourishment is certain to provide nesting habitat that would not have existed under DEP's original permit." Sea Turtle Survival League is fighting against coastal armoring because erosion control structures have been proven to destroy sea turtle nesting habitat and to increase erosion down the beach. The increased erosion typically leads to even more armoring. Sea turtles have lived on Earth for more than 200 million years, but habitat destruction is now one of the biggest threats to their survival, Godfrey said. Source: excerpted from Sea Turtle Survival League Press Release, 13 April 1994.