Beef Cattle in Myakka Park?!

DEP Misrepresents Existing Cattle Situation in State Parks

 A recent guest column supplied by DEP argues "Cattle grazing also currently occurs in eight state parks and has for some time, without any complaints from visitors or damage to natural resources, while providing effective vegetation management."

The implication, of course, is that these parks are in some way comparable to what is being proposed for Myakka River State Park. It is impossible to know if DEP isn't aware of the facts or simply thinks no one will bother to find out.

There are two major problems with the DEP statement: the first is that the other state parks with cattle are somehow similar to Myakka and the second is that cattle don't damage natural resources.

ARE THE 8 STATE PARKS WITH COWS SIMILAR TO THE MYAKKA SITUATION?

To begin with, the statement makes it seem as though all the cattle in state parks are part of commercial cattle operations that are providing effective vegetation management. That's not so.

Cattle Parks 1 through 3. 
The cattle in three of the parks are a relict breed of scrub or cracker cattle that are in the park as part of interpretation efforts to help visitors understand Florida history. If you want to see them, head to Dudley Farm, Paynes Prairie or Lake Kissimmee State Parks. 

Or you can see examples of these scrub cattle at Crowley Museum and Nature Center just north of Myakka Park. If DEP was proposing a few cracker cows as part of a historical exhibit in Myakka River State Park I doubt if there would be many objections. But a few scrub cows are not what is being proposed in Myakka.

Scrub cow and calf at Dudley Farm State Park

That leaves five other parks with cows. These parks have contemporary commercial cattle breeds. In order to understand if what it happening at these parks is comparable to what is being proposed at Myakka, you need to know less than 5% of area in Myakka identified for the cattle lease is former pasture. That is, less than 5% of the proposed lease area was ever cleared of native vegetation and planted in pasture grass -- the rest of the site is native habitat, which ranchers call native range. So the proposed Myakka cattle lease site is more than 95% native habitat. 

4. At Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park 6,000 acres that were converted to improved pasture prior to purchase are still grazed by cattle. That’s 6,000 out of 54,000 acres. 6,000 acres of improved pasture -- a big hunk of pasture, not the meager 300 acres being discussed at Myakka.

5. Okeechobee Battlefield Historic State Park has cattle grazing and “contains no intact natural communities and the entire park is classified as ruderal and developed land.” This park was acquired for historic reasons, not its natural systems.  

At Alafia River, and Catfish Creek, grazing occurs on existing pastures that were acquired as part of  larger parcels.  

6. Go to DEP's Alafia River State Park webpage. You'll find this quote: "Located on what was once a phosphate mining site, the unique topography of the reclaimed land offers some of Florida's most radical elevation changes." Enough said.

7. Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve State Park contains 2,786 acres of ruderal land. There is a relatively small portion of flatwoods in the Rolling Meadows addition that were not altered by agricultural impacts. The unit management plan (page 20) contains the following text: "The park has a short-term cattle lease on a portion of the Rolling Meadows addition of the preserve. This was amended to a cattle lease on the adjacent Lake Kissimmee State Park cattle lease site. The area that this incorporates was formerly cattle pasture prior to the DEP acquiring it. The cattle grazing is only an interim management tool that is being used until a longer term restoration plan for the area is carried out. The long-term goal would be to restore the area to the extent possible to the original natural community(s)."

 8. I am still looking for the eighth state park with cattle. It may be Colt Creek State Park, but I don't know if the managers moved forward on this item in the unit management plan: "A cattle lease may be needed as an interim management practice to control the vegetation height within selected improved pastures. The park will evaluate the feasibility of a cattle lease at Colt Creek State Park."

But when I find it, that eighth cow park, I am very optimistic it will be a situation comparable to the four previously described parks that sensibly pursued cattle leases on disturbed (ruderal) land and/or significant chunks of former pasture.  

         IS IT TRUE THAT CATTLE POSE NO THREAT TO  TO NATURAL RESOURCES?

It should be obvious that cattle have tremendous potential to damage natural resources. If you drive by a neglected pasture, it is not uncommon to see a proliferation of thistles, pawpaws, dog fennel, tropical soda apple, and shrubs, as well as saw palmettos and small cabbage palms.

That's because from a cow's perspective all plant species can be placed into one of two groups: increasers and decreasers. Increasers are plants that increase when subjected to the selective grazing pressure exerted by cattle. Those are the ones that taste bad or are thorny or tough or out of reach -- the thistles, etc. In seasonal wetlands, cows avoid pickerelweed, another increaser. 

On the other hand, there are plants cows love to eat: these are called decreasers because they tend to decrease in the presence of cattle because the cattle eat them. Favored grasses such as maidencane and Lopsided Indian Grass are decreasers and cattle will go after them preferentially. 

You can see where this is headed. Left to their own devices cows will eat most of the desirable plants and leave the undesirable ones. The result is a shift in plant species composition as the increasers increase and the decreasers decrease. Unless ranchers attack the thistles and shrubs, the ultimate result will be a degraded pasture.  

One approach to minimizing these problems is rapid rotation – sequencing cows through different pastures before the desirable palatable plants are too heavily grazed. But that requires a lot more fencing and more cowboy time spent moving cattle. The fencing is not only a significant cost, but also consumes habitat and creates breaks in habitat continuity. The elaborate conditions placed in the draft lease agreement are ample testimony to the destructive potential of cattle.

Managers at Myakka have spent decades in an effort to reduce shrubs and other increasers while trying to restore grasses and wildflowers that are commonly decreasers.

Elsewhere in the opinion piece the claim is made that "Visitors will most likely have to seek out the cattle to enjoy a scene from Old Florida." As noted above, the "Old Florida" effect is produced by cracker cows, not modern breeds. 

DEP has attempted to reassure the public that the proposed cattle lease in Myakka River State Park is the type of operation that has proven to be acceptable in eight other state parks and that the situations in those eight parks are comparable to what is being proposed for Myakka. That's not the case and DEP should concede that fact.

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Here's the deal. I live in Sarasota County. I have the greatest respect for the local cattleman (including dairymen) I've have known. They include Mabry, Lat, Dallas, Buster, Lewis, Chuck, Allan, and Cy. I wish there more like them. They owned/managed most of the land now protected for its environmental value. Today, Sarasota County owns conservation easements on 17,045 acres of privately owned cattle ranch land. That's testimony to rancher stewardship.

In addition the conservation easements, there are 2,878 acres of cattle leases on publicly-owned lands in Sarasota County. I support those leases just as I support the leases on the existing state parks. Cattle leases can provide either income or management services on sites with extensive pasture. (Or, in the case of scrub cattle, they can be educational.) 

I personally believe that a mix of core parkland where the habitat is managed without cows surrounded by ranchland with cows provides maximum diversity for wildlife and helps protect the park from more intensive adjoining uses. Its probably true that the neighboring ranches lack some of decreaser species found in the park, but there is some great prairie and pineland on nearby ranches. I wouldn't want all one or the other. And ranchers and park managers learn from each other about management issues. 

Whenever the public acquires lands with significant pasture, (either in terms of total pasture acreage or high percentage of pasture or ruderal land) cattle grazing should be considered. 

If Myakka Park fit either of these criteria, this blog would be quite different, or wouldn't exist.  But the former pasture or ruderal acreage in MRSP is minimal, whether measured by acreage or percentage (less than 5% of the park). 

For some unknown reason, DEP got it into its figurative head that cattle grazing makes sense in Myakka. It does not. It didn't make sense in 2004 when the unit management plan was last updated and it makes even less sense now.

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DEP lists three environmental priorities on the front page of the agency's website. Ironically, the  third priority is Increasing the access to our award-winning state parks. How is adding commercial cattle to Myakka River State Park's minimal former pastureland going to advance that goal?

Bottom line: Grazing revenue statewide averages about $7.42 per acre.  Revenue from outdoor recreation averages $74 per acre, if you spread user fee revenues across the acreage of the entire park system.  And Myakka River State Park is the second most popular inland state park in Florida and one that pays its own way. 

Adding cattle to Myakka River State Park is not comparable to existing cattle operations on other parks and it is not moving in the right direction. 

Tallahassee Attack on Myakka River State Park

The following essay originally appeared in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on April 20th, 2015 as a guest column on the editorial page A-14. As usual, authors do not get to choose headlines. The SH-T headline: FIGHT PLAN TO ALLOW CATTLE GRAZING IN MYAKKA RIVER STATE PARK places the focus on the cattle grazing. My point was more about challenging politicians and political appointees who want to change long-standing park policy based on top-down ideology rather than science-based management originating from those closest to the situation.

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The other day I saw that the old Bispham homestead on 41 north of Proctor had been torn down. It wasn’t as though some peace treaty had been signed there, but it was part of a National Register Historic District and it was a little bit of old Sarasota we could see and enjoy as we drove the Trail. The owners were under no binding obligation to preserve it, but it got me wondering what, if anything, we consider sacred around here? Not sacred in the religious sense, but what would the community really go to bat for to keep our heritage intact? Siesta Beach came to mind, and some folks are challenging a dredging plan that could significantly impact Siesta Beach. But what comes after Siesta Beach?

The answer seemed obvious: Myakka River State Park -- one of the state’s most impressive wildlife locales and a natural asset that is a touchstone for many residents. Although it is a State Park, Sarasotans can be forgiven for thinking of it as our park. It is our wild counterbalance to our developed coast – a place for personal exploration and THE go-to place to take out-of-state guests to see alligators. Most of us can’t remember a Sarasota without Myakka River State Park, which has become a major tourist attraction (read economic driver) as well.

No sooner had I completed my thought experiment than I started hearing rumors about someone or some group (politicians?, bureaucrats? – it wasn’t clear) in Tallahassee that is trying to change Myakka Park and avoid public involvement. There’s apparently a new approach to State Parks being advanced that argues they should be paying their way by incorporating multiple uses: cell phone towers, wellfields, timbering, cattle leases, and maybe even hunting. This goal of making State Parks generate more income is apparently part of a philosophy that argues State Parks should not simply be places managed with a focus on conservation and recreation, but instead be “multiple use” public lands that treat all potential uses equally and require no state funding. State Parks already cover more than three quarters of their operating cost, and Myakka Park brings in more money than the state is spending to run it, making Myakka a “donor” that helps offset those parks that aren’t as lucrative.

Despite more than paying its own way, our park is apparently being singled out as some sort of test case. An old friend of mine filed a Freedom of Information Act request and got a copy of a proposal to force Myakka Park to lease ten square miles for a private cattle lease. This proposal would circumvent the approved procedure for changing the park’s management plan – a procedure that mandates an opportunity for public input.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with cattle grazing on public lands – I was supportive of cattle leases on Sarasota County’s Jordyn (Deer Prairie Creek) and Walton sites, but I definitely have a problem with top-down management decisions originating 250-miles away by people who may never have been to Myakka Park. Rejiggering park management plans by remote control from Tallahassee doesn’t make any sense. I question whether privatizing part of Myakka even makes any sense for ranchers. Only about 5% of the area is former pasture and it has been abandoned for 18 years. It would require a lot of fencing and water sources, loading facilities, and other changes before it could work.

Ironically, Sarasota County has been through this before. Back in the late 60’s the state decided to turnover the development of Oscar Scherer (then a state recreation area) to private contractors. Audubon and Save Our Bays challenged that decision and the state was forced to buy out the private firm. Our state parks need to remain places managed for conservation and recreation, not whatever might turn a buck.

Will the State go ahead and with this proposal for an imposed cattle lease? Will we see more proposals for uses such as wellfields, cell phone towers, and hunting in our state parks? Will the Tallahassee crowd try to short-circuit the adopted rules for changing park management plans by excluding the public? I don’t know, but we may be about to find out.

The hatched area below Highway 72 is the area proposed for a cattle lease.

South Lido: Erosion Problem or Inappropriate Building Problem?

The Army Corps of Engineers would have you believe the erosion problems on Lido Key stem from actions of John Ringling. Not buying it. Ringling connected the Cerol Isles, but it was still just sand and responded to natural forces. 

The Corps never mentions the decisions that were made to allow the construction of buildings out into what was open beach or open water in 1948. 

South Lido, Groundhog Day 1948. The Lido casino appears in the upper right.
Note where Ben Franklin Drive ends.
This is the image used to create the graphic above.

Lead on the Pinelands Reserve: Violation of a Public Promise

On Thursday the 22nd, the Planning Commission considered Rezone Petition 14-34 and, despite testimony arguing against from Bill Lewis, Wade Matthews, Jim Hunter, and myself, they voted 7-1 to move the rezone forward. Special note should be made of contributions from Maynard Hiss and Sherm Stratton.

Commissioner Bob Burrus asked some relevant questions and ultimately voted against (Chair Bob Morris also asked about downrange potential safety problem with bullets from the existing range possibly affecting the proposed sporting clays course, but apparently his concerns were addressed).

I was surprised to learn the county is the applicant, since one can't really determine that from the application.

The county's whole argument about why the Comp Plan, Land Management Master Plan, and Pinelands Reserve Master Plan don't apply is that the Pinelands Reserve does not appear on a list of existing county-owned parks and preserves. No one bothered to ask why it doesn't, when the list was made, who made it, at who's direction. The relevant question is why it is not on the list!

If you know an investigative reporter or just a persistent citizen who would like to get to the bottom of this, please contact me.

To review the county packet, click here.

I believe the County Commission will take this up February 10th at 9:00 am in Venice. Materials for the board packet need to be a week ahead of time.

Pine Flatwoods: Current Issues in Sarasota County

There are currently at least three situations that will affect the future of pine flatwoods in Sarasota County.

ORDINANCE 2014-075

The first and most pressing deals with proposed changes that would amend how pine flatwoods are treated in zoning categories that require open space.

PLEASE NOTE: There is an email circulating with a header that states this matter will be taken up Wednesday morning -- that is an error. It will come before the County Commision Monday morning January 12th 2015.  

Since environmentalists argued for and secured a delay in consideration of this measure in November, the staff has done some great work, which included meeting with a variety of people who have concerns:

• They corrected inaccurate and misleading maps.

• They improved the accuracy of calculations regarding the status of pine flatwoods

• They produced detailed maps showing pine flatwoods that could be affected

• They added a fourth condition (#3) that can be invoked to require protection of pine flatwoods

The change would basically remove a requirement that pine flatwoods be protected as open space (providing there was an open space requirement in that zoning category and the quota was not met by other rarer habitats that are required to be protected) unless they fell into one of four categories.

Here's the packet material.

I have never been convinced many pines fall within required buffers for watercourses or wetlands (#1 and #2), so it is not clear to me that this provision would have much effect.

One significant change in this version is the addition of item 3 (unfortunately not discussed in the cover memo), which enables staff to protect flatwoods if the "habitat increases the ecological value and ability to conduct management of habitats required to be preserved or publicly owned environmentally sensitive land." This is not the case currently and is an improvement.

At this point in time the “wildlife corridor” provision (#4) is practically meaningless, because there are no documented wildlife corridors in the urban service area (USA). This is not to say they don’t exist, but the county has not documented any and there is no independent documentation of corridors in the USA. A third party could document wildlife utilization in the future, so it is important to leave it in there, but at the moment it has no practical bearing.

Some have argued that isolated trees or tree patches represent "stepping stones" or an archipelago of habitat that should be considered a wildlife corridor. In my opinion, the fact that migrating birds in particular use pines (and other trees) in this manner is an argument for retaining the trees in the first place (retaining the current regulations) and not a convoluted effort to qualify scattered habitat as a corridor of some sort to secure protection via provision #4.

One argument against the current approach is that we end up with tiny pine fragments between, for example, a curb and a parking lot in urban areas. The county displays photos that are an effort to show how ridiculous these situations are. In reponse, see the Google streetview photo of  a lone pine next to Bowlees Creek on US 41 in Manatee County. This tree has supported an osprey nest for years.

This lone pine next to our busiest highway demonstrates that
even a single slash pine can be very significant for wildlife.

Thus its not clear that the county has made a case that the change is needed. They could simply amend the current approach to require #1 through; #4 be implemented first when using flatwoods to meet open space requirements. In addition, staff is unable to predict what the effect of passing this change would have on future extent of pine flatwoods in the USA. I believe the commission and community are entitled to a rational estimation (even if it is only a range) of the effect of any proposed change.

While it is worth challenging this proposed change, there are significant threats and opportunities related to Pine Flatwoods in the county that this change does not address.

2) PINELANDS RESERVE REZONING  Rezone petition 14-34

The County is pushing a proposal contrary to the comprehensive plan to place a lead-shot based sporting clays facility on 44 acres of the Pinelands Reserve. According to the Rezone petition 14-34, an estimated 11 acres of Pine Flatwoods would be cleared in the center of this area, so that lead shot could periodically be removed (the shooters would be aiming in towards this center).  You can access the application here.

Lead shot is very problematic environmentally.
Contamination at Shooting Ranges
Weathering of Lead Bullets and Their Environmental Effects at Outdoor Shooting Ranges (Florida)
"Environmental impacts of lead shot at skeet shooting ranges.... in Florida"
From the above:

"In Florida, several natural factors, such as low soil pH, low clay and organic matter content (Chen et al., 1998), and high rainfall, can accelerate lead shot weathering and thus increase the risk of contamination of environment. However, little information is available as to the impacts of Pb shot on the environment in Florida." 

The clearing of 11 acres and the use of lead shot is problematic because according to the Pinelands Reserve Management Plan any recreational use on the Pinelands Reserve must be ecologically benign, non-consumptive, and resource-based.

Since the county proposal is consumptive (clearing 11 acres) and non-benign (lead shot) the proposal is cross-wise with both the Reserve management plan and comprehensive plan. This will be hard to challenge because the commission is pushing for more sports tourism.

The irony is that 2016 will mark the 30th anniversary of acquiring the Pinelands Reserve (then Walton Tract), but we non-consumptive, ecologically benign, resource-based hikers have never been allowed to use it. 

The Planning Commission will take this up on January 22, at 6:30 pm in Venice.

By the way: if you are not aware of the active petitions map -- check it out. 

View the announcement for the December 18th neighborhood workshop here. Please note there is NO mention of the Pinelands Reserve. Instead the expansion area is merely identified as "Subject Parcel". Whether this was deliberate or accidental the effect is the same -- the public was not informed of a significant proposed change on the Pinelands Reserve.

This location map fails to disclose that the "SUBJECT PROPERTY" is, in fact the Pinelands Reserve. 

There is also no mention of the permanent 200 acre Gopher Tortoise Mitigation area lying immediately to the West of the proposed rezoning.

3: ORANGE HAMMOCK We have an opportunity to protect nearly 2,000 acres of high quality Pine Flatwoods in the Orange Hammock project, which lies in North Port. This is problematic politically because the North Port Chamber of Commerce and some Commissioners oppose this acquisition. Ironically, this is a case of government attempting to interfere with a real estate transaction. Please let county and state elected officials know this is a key parcel.

Pale Green areas are Pine Flatwoods that total 1,939 acres.

Regardless of the outcome on Monday, please help repel the Rezone petition and support acquisition of Orange Hammock.

Mote is Doing it Again: Claiming Their Caviar is Sustainable

The October 6th 2014 Sarasota Herald-Tribune features an article about Mote aquaculture that repeats Mote's claim that their caviar operation is sustainable. I've been challenging this assertion for years, with no discernible success. 

Read my 2011 blog posting here, which provides three arguments against their caviar being sustainable.  

Or read the newspaper feature here. 

An excerpt appears below. 

Excerpt from online version of the article. I did not add the question mark.