COMMENTS: FWC proposed guidelines for relocation of gopher tortoisesSPECIFIC COMMENTS ON THE DRAFT TORTOISE MANAGEMENT PLAN BEING SUBMITTED TO THE FWC COMMISSION, APRIL 2009.
SUBMITTED BY: RAY ASHTON, GOPHER TORTOISE CONSERVATION INITIATIVE, ASHTON BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH & PRESERVATION INSTITUTE
MARCH 25, 2009
RULE SECTION
FWC COMMENTS ON MANAGEMENT ON LANDS IT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR AND FOR ALL OTHER PUBLIC LANDS: CONCERN: There are no comments or details regarding how habitats will be monitored for tortoise forage or other conditions. Now that we have considerably more information regarding gopher tortoise forage needs and other behaviors, it is important that two things take place.
1. Land management staff of FWC and all other agencies dealing with tortoise habitat should be trained in the simple methods of ongoing monitoring. Tortoise-specific forage does not necessarily fit the general requirements of the burning plan outlines in the rules.
2. Policy (Guidelines) should mandate monitoring tortoise sites/habitat for physical changes, both positive (e.g., new herbaceous plant emergence after prescribed fire) and negative (such as canopy or hardwood encroachment) and maintaining a data record so managers can readily discern and record and either ameliorate (in the case of “bad” changes) or enhance/capitalize on (in the case of “good” changes) these changes. A tangible record of such changes is important both for the longtime manager to assess his own progress with the tortoises’ health and reaction to changes, but also to assist land managers new to the job in immediately gleaning the history and what new measures to take. An important part of managers’ records should be forage plant diversity and volume and the changes in these numbers in response to physical changes to the habitat (e.g., fire, canopy thinning, or overgrazing by too many tortoises per acre etc)
3. Monitoring is the key point in determining relocation success and if recipient site managers on all lands are in fact managing habitat to ensure relocated tortoise populations are not only surviving/staying onsite in the immediate term but are also good to go (as a natural population) for the long-term: meaning, whether or not the habitat and forage conditions are adequate to support them.
4. Additional research is needed to learn more about forage needs to determine whether current management is in fact, over the long term, impeding the chances of tortoise survival or enhancing it. It is FWC’s role to closely monitor the effects of its own policy and guidelines on the species it is managing---and it cannot realistically do that job without concrete records, such as those outlined above, from the tortoise managers themselves. Monitoring data from individual sites gives FWC the data to comprehensively and accurately monitor the health and progress of the species as a whole, to reveal whether or not the new Management Plan is fulfilling its goals and objectives vis-à-vis recovering the threatened tortoise.
PERMITTING
Five or Fewer Permits:
There is nothing in the new rules/guidelines that will make the five tortoises or fewer permit any more successful (or less disastrous) than it has been in the past and therefore this permit version demonstrates no conservation value whatsoever---despite that is was written into a Management Plan whose whole purpose is conservation of a threatened animal. According to figures for the numbers of these small sites, the number of permits, and follow-up data, this permit category clearly is not working and is simply another form of authorized take. This is one facet of land development that will continue unabated or grow even in bad economic times, thus increasing tortoise and commensal (unauthorized and unremunerated) take. It is simply not acceptable, under a management plan purporting to “recover” the threatened tortoise, to allow for these quiet peacemeal takes to occur, in an unpredictable and undocumentable way, any more than it was acceptable for big developers to pay “blood money” to bury tortoises alive. In both cases the tortoise losses are both inhumane and biologically unsustainable.
Recommendations:
1. Encourage government to take over the 5 or fewer tortoise /single family home permits.
2. Establish in each county, one or more recipient sites that will take tortoises under this permit so that small site landowners have a central, well-publicized receiving site where their displaced tortoises---and even wayward tortoises of unknown origin rescued by Samaritan citizens---could be taken and released. Such receiving sites could be part of a county’s restocking of its conservation lands, or parks; private lands supported by conservation groups; or idle county-owned lands that can be enhanced and established purely for the purpose of receiving small site and wayward tortoises. There are many ways to accomplish secure, decent futures for the small site tortoises---and there is no valid reason to “write off” thousands of tortoises to small site take when there are proactive steps FWC can take to better orient counties toward taking responsibility for the tortoises their zoning and permitting cause to be displaced. There is no reason FWC cannot methodically send a knowledgeable staff person around to each county and explain the need for small-site tortoise receiving sites and how to set one up.
3. Require post-relocation inspection and set fees to cover basic expenses if done by experts or trained volunteers.
4. Encourage the development of “Community Tortoise Programs” using the Sugar Mill Woods as an example.
AUTHORIZED AGENT
We have discussed the current guidelines with some of the best consultants in the business, developers, county staff, state agency personnel, and various other stakeholders and they all concur with the three following:
1. The Florida Environmental Association has refused to be involved with coming up with a plan for guidelines over the past three years. Vivienne Hand and ABRPI worked hard along with several local chairs and got no support or willingness to establish a plan. Working with local professional environmental consulting groups ABRPI produced a list of requirements and submitted them to FWC two years ago. This was from members of the organization.
2. Draft rules outlining the authorized agent qualifications are too vague and do not detail the specific knowledge and experience required to do the tasks involved or the needed expertise in gopher tortoise natural history and behavior. The proposed guidelines would not solve the huge problem of inexperience and lack of knowledge and training in proper methodology; in fact, they will cause greater headaches related to quality control than we have now, per my comments below:
3. Many FWC staff lack sufficient training to evaluate the qualifications of consultants. In some cases, experienced FWC judgment will be required to determine, for instance, whether or not a consultant can find the end chamber of an excavated burrow or monitor tortoise forage. Simply requiring an arbitrary number of hours of experience or training does not remedy the fact that people (perhaps with lots of now-irrelevant “hours” of estimating burrow numbers to determine take permit fee amounts, under the old IT system!) may be using ineffectual or imprecise methods that lead to gross error and passing these methods on to the new consultant generation. Case in point: Three “highly-recommended” backhoe operators that “had been digging for twenty years” were found to be using not only the poorest method (from the tortoise extraction success rate perspective), but also an illegal method, based on OSHA requirements for human safety. An FWC staff member recommended the firm. (!!!)
Recommendations
1. FWC cannot wait two years to train its staff in these basic tortoise conservation aspects and to learn about the natural history of the tortoise. (e.g.: Water is not a barrier to tortoises---they swim quite well---yet it is common for FWC to allow canals or lakes as a “natural barrier” on recipient sites to supposedly prevent tortoise exit. The rule/directive from FWC in this case doesn’t correspond to the reality of tortoise natural behavior. Shouldn’t it?) It is really important that at least some people in each regional office have training and onsite experience to make judgment calls over and above what is written in the permit. All key FWC personnel in the system should be required to take basic courses in tortoise natural history and management and, to be onsite where key methods are being used.
2. The two-level system put in by Staff after the Stakeholder public meeting (mostly made up of consultants) should be replaced by the recommended three-tiered system below:
a. Level 1---Entry level:
People who are entering the profession should be required to take a basic training course in tortoise natural history and instruction with some hands-on experience on all the primary tasks (burrow survey, trapping, habitat evaluation and monitoring, excavation, and data management and collection). They should come in with a degree in the natural sciences.
All they need is a certificate to demonstrate that they have had at least 20 hrs of class and field training. Then, when a Certified Agent has them in the field, they’ll know that the entry-level agents have had at least an introductory-level training in proper methods. Currently, it is the most untrained individuals sent out to do surveys and can-trapping. This will happen even with the ( Staff’s proposed?) certificate program.
b. Level 2---Standard Certification: There should be at least 3 years of experience in tortoise management and mitigation along with training and certification by people with Advanced Certification. These people can only work in the areas where they have demonstrated competence/expertise, including: accurate 100% surveys using accurate GPS methodology; proper safe methods for trapping; proper handling and transport of tortoises and commensals; and all other aspects of donor site activity.
These persons cannot carry out burrow excavation or other critical procedures without full certification---i.e., Individuals who have been working for 3 years and can have at least 3 people certify by observation, that these people can perform tortoise excavations in at least 3 different primary habitats ( e.g. sandhill, flatwoods, soils with rocks and boulders). OR: they can assist one or more Senior Certified Tortoise Experts and then manage burrow excavations while being observed by a SCTE for a minimum of 20 burrows in three different habitats.
Level 2 individuals cannot manage recipient sites without having three years of experience using enclosures and methods outlined as minimum standard operating procedures for selecting, managing and developing recipient sites as identified in these guidelines. These have to be identified in the permit applications and assured by FWC staff. OR: they must take a training program in: planning and financing; fencing; site evaluation and monitoring; ecological training covering natural habitats; management techniques including prescribed burning; and (applicable) ranching methods. They must have worked with a SCTE in establishing and monitoring recipient sites and working and managing plans with recipient site owners or agencies and donor site owners including establishing perpetual management funding programs and conservation easements.
c. Level 3---Senior Certification: These individuals have had at least 5 years experience and/ or training and onsite experience with a SCTE in the key areas of excavation and recipient site management. If experience is the only criteria for certification, they should be certified in excavation and recipient site development and management by FWC or approved SCTE individuals. These individuals work to train others and with FWC in certification of others. They demonstrate their professionalism and commitment by working in service of sound tortoise guidelines and/or by doing research and experimentation in better management methods. They keep up with the latest literature on tortoise biology and methods and attend annual updates to the new rules and guidelines on tortoise management.
COMMENTS
Landowners, agency personnel and professional- level consultants, and engineers and attorneys working with developers who have provided input to me about the new tortoise rules all agree that Staff’s proposed guidelines do not (but should):
1. Take into account the level of experience and training of people coming into the field.
2. Demonstrate methods of ensuring that best management practices are being used. Today’s consultants may work for years without ever knowing that the person who taught them was never properly trained and was using substandard, ineffectual or even harmful methods.
3. Provide qualification levels similar to those in other fields of environmental science.
4. Provide measurable goals and expectations. Proposed guidelines do not take into account the need for training and actual experience that is needed to learn and be prepared for difficult circumstances. This is particularly true in excavation and for other situations/decisions that crop up when performing relocations from donor to recipient sites. Landowners and agency land managers quite clearly tell me that past experience has taught them that the average consultant, despite their years of education or field work, are not prepared for what it takes to do all that is needed on recipient sites over the years involved or establish budgets and deal with the economic aspects. As one rancher said: “if you don’t know one end of a cow from the other then you cannot tell me how I can run tortoises and cows together.” There is an obvious need for more comprehensive, “holistic” knowledge on the part of consultants.
5. Establish a plan for the use of Senior (advanced) tortoise agents to do site visits and to mentor groups of individuals. They could also be on call to answer questions and help make decisions based upon biology and the well being of the animals, and not just upon rigid rules or paper instructions. When a critical “judgment call” is called for, it should be made by someone qualified to make it. Salary for such a senior role should be reasonable to meets needs and yet under the maximum for social security and travel and other expenses would have to be met. This salary could be paid by the consulting firm or county requesting help. Note: There are a number of retired or retiring biologists that are considering teaming up to do this and to do survey work for other listed species.
CONCLUSION
We have come a long way and the rules are in operational shape. The guidelines, however, have gone through an unacceptable metamorphosis once out of the hands of the GT2 team in Tallahassee. It is clear that there is a strong resistance to change and misplaced allegiance to the FWC rather than a commitment to the successful long term protection of the gopher tortoise (or other species). Perhaps the agency has been so diligent to compromise that even when the threat comes from the other side (pro-conservation), they still knee-jerk toward some form of compromise in the wrong direction. This is why the common gopher tortoise has jumped to threatened status. We are so close to achieving something really grand and cooperative and unprecedented in wildlife conservation with the tortoise Plan, but apparently some of the issues are so new and so foreign (like the funding and monitoring program) that they have been simply ignored and left unaddressed by Staff. But just because our steps take us into terra incognita doesn’t mean we should bolt to run back the way we came! There may seem to be temporary psychological security in procedural status quos, but at grave cost to the tortoise---and by extension, at a disservice to Florida’s citizens who want FWC to “protect” the tortoise in the best ways it knows how---and expects it to, using its constitutional authority to do so---and to all parties involved in or affected by the new Gopher Tortoise Management Plan. So let’s do this right---all the way down the line.
One last thing: WE SHOULD NOT WAIT TO IMPLIMENT SOME OF THE KEY CONSERVATION POINTS. Action should be taken immediately on the following:
1. Mandating Soft Release and enclosing recipient sites for the prescribed duration (6 months to a year) should be effective immediately. The current rules and guidelines are detrimental and should simply be replaced now by the new ones agreed to by Staff and our Steering Committee. The guidelines written above should be immediately put in place. Further, any FWC staff going out to evaluate a recipient site needs to possess the proper training. We have had two incidents where they have not had the appropriate knowledge or experience. Field botany or forestry background does not necessarily imply knowledge about classification of sites for tortoise purposes.
2. Release a good table including forage parameters on recipient site acceptability (It will take 1- 3 years to bring some sites up to excellent and owners want to know what FWC wants before beginning).
3. Establish clear guidelines on professional certification as soon as possible and the date that these will be implemented. Landowners need to know these and many earnest consultants wish to begin working in the right direction now (not years from now).
4. Teaching courses. This affects ABRPI most directly but consultants too. Qualifications of Instructors are the important issue. We bring in the best folks to teach our courses. What we teach is based on what is required to do it right no matter how simple the task. That way all the participants are trained. Get something resolved. As one attendee put it: “most of the scientists have no experience in the methods that are required to do it right.” So, are the universities (IFAS) going to jump in? Disney? Who will teach? Note that there is a lag from 6 months to at least a year after the basic guidelines are set and when courses can be offered. What about past attendees’ courses? Can they get credit?
5. FWC staff training cannot wait. This is one of the greatest problems today. They are trained in the dogma of the organization but not in the biology and management of the tortoise.
ESTABLISHING RECIPIENT SITES
The International Roundtable on Chelonian Relocation and Assurance Colonies was sponsored by many conservation and scientific organizations and was conducted by the ABRPI. The concerns and recommendations of the attendees and later writing committees have been or are currently being published. FWC has agreed that relocation and proper land management is the foundation for the new protection of the gopher tortoise in this state. Many other states and countries are watching to see what happens and if this will work. “Can a state agency stick to what needs to be done without compromising it to uselessness?”
In our book, Ashton and Ashton 2008, The Natural History and Management of the Gopher Tortoise, Gopherus polyphemus….. we have taken the key elements presented by the world experts and taken years of research to answer many of the questions and concerns of the Roundtable participants. The Stakeholders worked to establish verbiage for the guidelines that used much of the methodology we had demonstrated as the best way we can do things now based on what we have learned. For some reason, essential components of the “guidelines” were changed/rewritten by Staff so as to be so vague that they cannot be considered true guidelines---and key points of great importance have been left out.
Financing
Without proper long-term financing that insures monitoring and management of tortoise recipient sites, we cannot say that the tortoise has been protected or its habitat is protected. As pointed out by TNC and us, many protected lands including Florida Forever and FWC tortoise mitigation lands sit without proper management for years with budget shortfalls cited as the excuse. Our research shows that sometime after 20 years the integrity of the tortoise habitat falters drastically and tortoises leave. There is a need for monitoring and management back-up for every Conservation- level tortoise relocation program. There is no guideline addressing this issue. DOF receives up to $750/ federally listed species to insure management costs are met over and above current management. There is a need to create funds regionally to do the same for private lands. Perpetual is a very long time, which covers generation after generation. FWC needs to address how to set up such funding.
Recommendation
Most experts we talked with said it would work better if the fund was statewide or regional and included some staff to curate incoming management data from which evaluations could be made to determine if some further action was needed. If a fire strike team was needed it would go there. Meanwhile the costs would either be billed or somehow accounted for. If done properly the charges for this effort could be lower to the donor sites yet produce a fund that would likely produce enough interests to pay for the needs to carry out monitoring and emergency management. We do not see FWC with staff or where-with-all to even do monitoring at this point.
Site Evaluation
Until we began our work in late 1986, the studies in tortoise forage were unable to demonstrate the tremendous complexity of tortoise foraging behavior or the huge number of plants and other things that tortoises eat. After learning that tortoise diet and foraging behavior is complex, we still do not know which plants are most important during the various seasons. We know that certain grasses make up about 80% of the diet but we don’t know which species provide the highly important nutrients that are not provided by grasses. We demonstrated that the small home ranges identified in the past do not tell the true story and that in fact home ranges are commonly much greater. Only recently have the reasons for this come to light. Researchers using passive monitoring programs are coming up with data quite similar to ours. We used direct observation from towers and working with tortoises that were willing to have us move along with them during foraging and other forays.
Vegetative Measurement and Monitoring
Diverse forage and canopy and shrub cover (percentage and type) are the key measures to determine if tortoises are likely to be found on a site or if one is suitable as a recipient site. Current guidelines give no way to determine what is great, good or bad potential tortoise habitat. How is a landowner or non-botanical consultant supposed to evaluate a site without some benchmarks? How do you establish a basic monitoring program without monitoring forage and canopy cover? The reviewers of our book were extremely excited by the way this was presented since it was clear and it helped with seasonal differences as well. Canopy cover is key not only to the health of the ground cover diversity but also the state of the overall property in the management timeline. Forage and canopy cover are key to the short- and long-term success (or failure) of relocation under the new Management Plan.
Tortoise Monitoring and health
Three different tortoise experts and veterinarians asked the same thing: “Why is FWC so fixated on URTD? “ If you are relocating tortoises, one needs to be better prepared to evaluate disease related to lack of proper diet, pesticides and insecticides or other foreign materials that may be in the groundwater table like nitrates due to septic tank plumes. Moving these animals into sites where human activities may have led to contamination of the ground water table is extremely important. There are a large number of other diseases that could be fatal. Basically tortoises can and do handle the natural diseases that they have lived with for thousands of years. It’s the new things that humans have added to the mix that should be evaluated. Nothing is mentioned about rapid genetic change yet it was clearly mentioned as a concern during the Roundtable.
Other Recipient Site Issues
A number of issues have come up from the general community: Who manages the relocation---like monitoring the fencing? Predators? Establishing the permanent monitoring program? Who gets copies? Who takes down the fence?
Commensals
Indigo Snakes
ABRPI, Central Florida Zoo, and Herpetological Associates have provided FWC and FWS a proposal to begin the establishment of a study on effective relocation, not unlike with ABRPI did on its own in clearly defining how relocation should work (6 months minimum of enclosure around the recipient site). In this case it is using adults found on development sites to re-establish indigo snakes in legitimate collections and to test a relocation protocol based on using neonate release. This is based on extremely successful work done by Herpetological Associates with a number of species. Just turning adult Indigo snakes loose will have the same results as hard release of gopher tortoises: immediate exit of the recipient site.
Burrowing Owls
The Ashtons were extremely successful in relocating burrowing owls to protected preserves with gopher tortoises. It appears that our B.O. research and methodology, which were conveyed to FWC, have somehow disappeared in the FWC offices. Current (different) methods appear to have had only limited results. No guidelines for burrowing owl relocation appear in the tortoise guidelines
Gopher Frogs
Our work over the years demonstrates that a simple pond in the middle of tortoise recipient site can work for breeding for a very long time with minor management. The frogs have to be released after the tortoises have created their burrows (10 days). R. capito will travel between 1500 and 2000m to appropriate breeding habitats. They must not have predatory fish and have a hydroperiod of at least 6 months. Peninsular capito should probably not be released in the panhandle due to uncertain speciation.
Florida Mice
Florida mice should be released only in areas where recipient sites do not have residents of the species already. It does not mean that because there are no gopher burrows that there are no Florida mice. Jim Layne said that they do quite well without gophers. So the recipient site should be trapped to determine presence or absence before releasing mice. This should be done when doing burrow and vegetative surveys for permitting, not after the mice are in hand.
Invertebrates
Recently, there have been found previously undescribed crickets and other species from tortoise burrows. Also, we have found that micro invertebrates have declined a great deal in most recent years. This may be due to the rather dry period. However, these invertebrates should be moved if one is relocating to a site in similar habitat, and the same physiogeographic area (Central Ridge, Brooksville Ridge, etc). A simple and cheap portable car vacuum will work fine for this purpose.
FWC should select a group of experts on all issues related to the professional training and experience and create the guidelines for each of the major aspects of tortoise management and mitigation.
NEED FOR IMMEDIATE GUIDELINE IMPLIMENTATION | 
