What's New
Wetlands play a critical role
in Florida’s
natural environment, recharging drinking water supplies, filtering out pollution,
and providing habitat for plants, birds, fish and other wildlife.
Last legislative session, Environment Florida joined a coalition ofconservation groups that successfully persuaded Gov. Crist to veto a bill that threatened seagrass beds and wetlands by making it much easier for
developers to dredge and fill these fragile areas to build more marinas and water-front condos.
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.
