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The State of Florida has approved destruction of more than 1,000 acres of wetland in the Cocohatchee Slough near Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary over the past year. While Audubon and its allies are challenging the federal versions of these permits, clearly the Cocohatchee permits are not isolated cases. Each year, thousands more acres of wetlands and endangered species habitat are permitted to destruction, with negligible mitigation, by state and federal agencies. This occurs despite supposedly-strict national and state policies of “no net loss of wetlands,” in effect since 1989.

Studies have recognized declines in water quality and water supply, and significant loss of shallow wetlands such as wet pinelands throughout Florida. Audubon has embarked, with help from colleagues, on a detailed effort to reform the state’s permitting process, and then tackle the federal process. Senior agency officials have been receptive in preliminary discussions of the problem.

Audubon’s wood stork and wetland expert, Jason Lauritsen, just did a rigorous review of the state’s principal wetland value assessment method. He concluded that the fundamental cause of poor wetland protection in state permitting is the bias of permit applicants, who are doing the wetland value scoring themselves, even though the law requires this to be done by state agencies’ staff. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

The areas most impacted, now and in the past, are shallow seasonal wetlands like pinelands, which also harbor melaleuca and other invasive exotic plants. The abundance of melaleuca trees in Southwest and South Florida has led to a scientifically baseless discounting in the regulations, and subjective scoring, of almost all functional values of such wetlands. A growing body of scientific documentation indicates that such assumption of devaluation is faulty. Yet the policies continue to jeopardize populations of wood stork and other imperiled species, and also affect water quality, supply, and flood protection.

Lauritsen and Audubon staff presented his wetland permit analysis results, and evidence of the threat to water and habitat resources statewide, to the Governing Board of the South Florida Water Management District in early March 2008, and then to Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Sole and his staff. Audubon encourages a vigorous dialogue and aggressive effort to amend relevant policies. It also hopes to involve all the permitting agencies and stakeholders, and looks forward to positive federal action on this issue.

Photo © RJ Wiley