Brief Summary
In May, a coalition of conservation groups, including Environment Florida, wrote a letter to Gov. Crist, urging him to veto HB 7059. The bill was originally intended to protect Florida’s seagrass beds, which provide habitat for large populations of fish and invertebrates, rich nurseries and feeding grounds for fish, crustaceans, and shellfish, and are some of the most productive ecological communities on earth.
But an amendment offered by Rep. Will Kendrick of Carabelle, and adopted by the Legislature directed the Governor and Cabinet to allow private companies to create sea grass mitigation banks on state-owned land. These companies would then sell “credits” to developers that would allow them to destroy sea grass beds along the coast for developments like new marinas or boating channels.An investigation by the St. Petersburg Times found that, between 1990 and 2003, 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands were lost to development.
We applauded the governor for
doing the right thing. As he noted in his veto letter, provisions in the bill
could have also allowed the destruction of cypress forests along rivers and
lakes, salt marshes along tidal streams and estuaries, mangrove forests along
the coast, and coral reefs.
