Issues, Florida Chapter

Biodiversity

Definition: Biodiversity is a contraction for biological diversity.
"All of the hereditary variation in organisms, from differences in ecosystems to the species composing each ecosystem, thence to the genetic variation in each of the species. As a term, biodiversity may be used to refer to the variety of life of all of Earth or to any part of it - hence the biodiversity of Peru or the biodiversity of a Peruvian rainforest."

Edward O. Wilson. 2002. The Future of Life. Pages 213-214.

What is Biodiversity?

Biodiversity is a contraction for biological diversity. Edward Wilson (In: The Future of Life. 2002. Pages 213-214) defines biodiversity as follows: "All of the hereditary variation in organisms, from differences in ecosystems to the species composing each ecosystem, thence to the genetic variation in each of the species. As a term, biodiversity may be used to refer to the variety of life of all of Earth or to any part of it – hence the biodiversity of Peru or the biodiversity of a Peruvian rainforest."

The Global Biodiversity Crisis

The Worst Case Scenario: The human species must voluntarily stabilize its population and reduce its materialism, achieving a sustainable global economy during the present century. If we do not reach these twin objectives, global ecosystems will become permanently simplified through species extinction, the present Biodiversity Crisis. Our species is experiencing historic levels of malnutrition and starvation, global warming, and water wars, is reaching exhaustion of non-renewable energy and other resources, experiencing severe global disease epidemics, experiencing increasing levels of violence and every sort of criminality, and has become complacent about avoiding regional wars. Once earth’s ecosystems have transitioned through the ongoing extinction event and we have turned the evolutionary clock back millions of years, human civilization will no longer have the free natural resources healthy ecosystems provide. The permanent environmental deterioration will probably necessitate some form of global dictatorship to bring about sustainability at a much reduced standard of living for practically everyone on earth.

Our species evolved in healthy, biologically diverse ecosystems. We will remain dependent on the clean air, land, and water they provide until our species goes extinct. Since healthy ecosystems require the biologically non-pathological performance of millions of other species, we must protect evolutionary biodiversity to protect ourselves. Since the start of the industrial revolution three hundred years ago with the invention of the steam engine, we have not been doing this. Because of our technological advances coupled with our population explosion, our pathological impact on ecosystems is exponentially increasing. We have reduced our long-term survival prospects, as by inventing and distributing nuclear weapons. Each species, on average, has several million years before it evolves into one or two new species or goes extinct. Our species, Homo sapiens, first appeared around 200,000 years ago on the continent of Africa, a relatively short time ago. At the rate we are destroying earth’s ecosystems, it is questionable whether we will be around as a species in another thousand years, let along another million or more years. Nearly half the present human population, 2.8 billion people, barely survives on the equivalent two United States dollars a day. This should be enough motivation for the other 3.2 billion of us on earth to improve our environmental behavior now, not next week or next month or next year. If not, even though our species probably won’t go extinct next year, if we can avoid global nuclear war, we obviously have already passed the critical tipping point on the downhill road toward chaos.

Our species is the only one on earth with the power to destroy all the complex ecosystems which support our continued presence. Evolution has created a lot of dead ends, species which went extinct rather than evolving further. 99 percent of all species evolved on earth are now extinct. But none of the other living creatures in life history has become so monstrously destructive. Luckily our evolutionary line has not been an ecosystem destroyer of any great magnitude for most of the seven million years our evolutionary line has been recognizable. We have only become a problem in the last three hundred years, the period of our industrial revolution, a tiny fraction of our species 200,000 years on earth. We are the sole cause of what E.O. Wilson calls the "sixth extinction." the latest in the three and a half billion years of earth’s life history (the earth was formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago and was lifeless its first 1.1 billion years). The fifth extinction event, which destroyed the dinosaurs, was probably caused by an asteroid hitting the earth. Recent research indicates global warming alone will probably cause the extinction of thirty percent of the planet’s present species, enough die-off to qualify for the sixth extinction. Our species has started too late to stop global warming, by slowing our production of greenhouse gases, before this extinction occurs.

Our species thinks and communicates, stores, retrieves, and uses information, and modifies environments like no other species on earth. Our unique biological evolution has permitted an amazing cultural evolution, which in a short 10,000 years, starting with agriculture, has altered the face of the earth. Unfortunately, we don’t plan in evolutionary time, only on the day-to-day time scale of our individual finite lifetimes. Since the start of our industrial revolution our cultural evolution and resulting impact on Earth’s ecosystems has gotten exponentially more pathological. What remains of the natural Earth cannot support the more than six billion people presently here, except at an unacceptably low standard of living. We have passed the tipping point of acceptable sustainability.

Why is the United States, the only superpower since 1989, so environmentally destructive? The answer is complex. But the primary reason is that our two major political parties choose candidates who are excessively funded by global corporations, many now with budgets greater than nations. Even though it is not inherent to the legal entity, U.S. corporations are causing the majority of pathological impacts on ecosystems, on a global scale. Corporate lobbyists control government decision-making through funding of candidates, who are then obligated when elected to repay the corporations with sweet government contracts and favorable legislation. These deals are always anti-environmental to varying degrees, because many of the economic costs are not included in price of the product. For example, the price of a kilowatt of electricity is always much too low, because the pollution caused is far from zero and these costs are not included. The fuels are usually not renewable, but government subsidies keep the price artificially low. The deaths and nonfatal health losses of the people from respiratory diseases are not included nor the human cost of fuel extraction (20,000 Chinese coal miners die in mine accidents every year). The environmental destruction of mountain top removal for coal is not included in the cost of coal nor the loss of land to nuclear contamination nor the disposal costs of nuclear waste (assuming a safe means of disposal is ever discovered) are not fully factored in, etc., etc. Corporate and income taxes collected in the United States are often turned into governmental subsidies to business, forming a closed financial loop designed solely for short-term profit. This is what inevitably happens when government and big business join hands. Human materialism has necessitated global corporations, which provide the greatest efficiency of use of capital. It costs less per unit to make anything when 20,000 workers do the job rather than 10. Economy of scale has necessitated the emergence of global corporations. Meeting the extreme consumer demand of two billion materialists requires maximum efficiency, provided only on the scale of the huge corporation, each employing thousands of highly trained people. Efficiency of scale and hidden, uncalculated costs keeps the price of goods low, out-competing the price of the few goods available today which include all the environmental and social costs in their sale price.

Ironically, corporations are not inherently evil institutions. We have one hope, since corporations are not going to disappear. We can hope every CEO on earth will become an environmentalist before it is too late. We are stuck with corporate structure, because small business cannot provide the goods and services demanded. We can’t reduce the demand fast enough. Unfortunately it is going to take too long to go back to a global population of three billion solely by attrition. We can expect more starvation, more wars, and epidemics to be in play. Our species will continue to rely too heavily on technological solutions to the biodiversity crisis, rather than reducing our materialism and overpopulation immediately, as is clearly demanded by common sense. And global population will continue to increase for decades before it finally, hopefully, starts to decline. The world presently has too many children, who will soon reach their reproductive years, to immediately call a halt to global population increase.

What is happening before our eyes? We are quickly transforming our diverse living spaces into only three types: 1. Urban ghettos for the workers, 2. Slums for the world’s poor, and 3. low pollution urban environments for the small minority who control the world’s financial wealth. These homes are all increasingly supported by a few greatly simplified ecosystems, managed only for food and energy production, manufactured products, and water storage. We haven’t yet been able to improve on photosynthesis. All living things live in a fixed space, with a fixed solar energy capture, mostly by photosynthesis of green plants. Our species now eats or otherwise uses over forty percent of the annual photosynthetic energy captured by all green plants on earth. We will reach a higher energy consumption percentage, before hopefully coming back down and self-regulating at much less than forty percent. All other biodiversity on earth, an estimated maximum of one hundred million species, must now survive on less than sixty percent of the earth’s total energy capture. This percentage is rapidly declining as our species takes more and more. This is why, in energetic terms, the sixth extinction is occurring. For the very hopeful among us, nuclear fusion, turning hydrogen into helium and energy like the sun does, may eventually solve this energy crisis. But who wants to live on an earth with 12 - 20 billion people!

It is critically important to understand that "inalienable human rights" are concepts of the human mind, impossible to achieve in severely degraded ecosystems. The present extreme inequity in the quality of life of individuals must be reduced, to obtain social justice for all. Our species has all the technical tools to end social injustice immediately. But this can only be achieved inside healthy ecosystems. It is unacceptable that almost half Earth’s human population survives on an income of less than $2 per day, and over a billion people are presently malnourished. We who live in the "advanced nations" can and must reduce our personal materialism, not only to reduce our direct assault on ecosystems, but also to make biologically possible the elevation of the standard of living of the rest of the world’s population. This elevated base line standard of living will not be that of the present middle-class U.S. citizen, living in a 2,000 square foot house and driving a personal car. We would need the ecosystem services of four Earths to achieve this level of materialism for all the over six billion people presently on Earth.

No one knows what the standard of living could be in a kinder world, because humans are still discovering new ways to manipulate the laws of biology, chemistry, and physics. Nor will there be one standard of living for all, even though we must demand social justice for all. We must not squelch human inventiveness, which is certainly not distributed equally in the human population. Thus, the distribution of wealth probably always must be unequal, to reward those who provide society with the greatest returns on investment. The only significant experiment in human history, supposedly to achieve economic equality, failed in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union, far short of Marx’s communist state, as conceived by Lenin and his cronies. Competition can’t be eliminated, because it is part of human nature. We should not try, because competitiveness improves human performance and the generation of new discoveries.

Unfortunately, the corporate profit mentality has driven individual competitiveness too far, to extreme polarization of wealth and power. Greed is good, said Richard Nixon. What must be done to correct this fatal trend? Most importantly, our corporate leaders must be environmentally re-educated, as indicated above. The wrong kinds of people usually become CEO’s of corporations. Although this mentality has declined in a few leaders, it isn’t changing fast enough. If voluntarism does not work, then some form of corporate dictatorship will evolve, since the necessity for every kind of control intensifies as ecosystems collapse. Corporations are already stronger than governments. Before more and more "technological advances" divorce us completely from nature, the real world, let’s institute the paradigm shift for the better. We must find permanent ways to improve human behavior.

 How to do it? Is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in our near future, a biochemical dictatorship of the human brain, to iron out the highs and lows of human behavior? Let’s hope not. But this is a real possibility, as scientists discover the biochemical secrets of the human brain. Our scientists are also quickly figuring out genetics in all kinds of organisms at the molecular level, playing God in the laboratory. The possibilities here for good or evil are accelerating. One thing is for sure: humans could learn a lot from how ecosystems operate, how they change through evolution and, now, human impact. The scientific establishment still spends relatively little on this endeavor, the synthesis of ecosystem ecology and computer science. A fundamental characteristic of ecosystem biodiversity is the complex interdependence of all living and nonliving components, due to the very long co-evolutionary history together. Think of how much we know about human biology. Then contemplate the fact that we know very little about any other vertebrate or invertebrate. Human action must be patterned after ecosystems, emphasizing global human interdependence and the acceptance of cultural diversity. Technology obviously has helped us in our cultural evolution, but it also is destroying us. As one of thousands of examples of our banging away at the fine watch with a sledge hammer, our species conducts thousands of natural experiments every minute, by releasing millions of tons of toxic, lab-made molecules into ecosystems, unknown in living systems. We have a fascination with weapons development. The United States now spends almost a half a trillion dollars a year on our Defense Department. You might ask yourself a simple question. Why does the world’s only superpower need constantly increasing defense spending? Where are all these terrorists we keep hearing about, day after day, from our federal government and the media? Obviously, our country would get a lot more for its money with global family planning and the Peace Corps than the largest and best equipped standing military establishment on earth. Corporations could be forced by federal law to use only practical ecology, sane economics, and universal ethics in decision-making, rather than building the best nuclear arsenal on earth. As individuals, we must return to a smaller scale of living, at a slower pace. You might ask yourself: Why can’t I live without my cell phone when five years ago practically no one had one?

While you are at it, ask yourself how in the world a $500,000 house could ever make anyone happy?

Florida's Biodiversity Crisis

What species can we ignore? Every living thing, native and exotic, belongs to one of five taxonomic Kingdoms, the bacteria, proctoctista (slime molds, algae, etc.), fungi, plantae, and animalia. John Muir, the founder of Sierra Club, said, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." He understood ecology before the science was invented. The general answer to this question is we can’t ignore any species, because every one has importance in maintaining a healthy ecosystem.

Our committee is interested in protecting only Florida’s native species, those which evolved here. Following Muir’s understanding of connectivity, we must include exotic species in our action plan. Exotic plants and animals (most dangerously the invasive species like hydrilla, non-native fire ants, armadillos, etc.) are unfortunately very common in Florida, and none to date have been exterminated. We have culturally accepted many exotic species of non invasive plants and animals, such as camphor trees, mondo grass, dogs, and cats, to the extent that practically no effort is made to remove them, even though they will never be part of our natural ecosystems. When I identified most of the vascular plants living at my home in Gainesville, I found that 57 percent of 84 species identified so far were exotic!

It is too late to know the total impact of exotic microscopic organisms on our ecosystems, because it is impossible to tell which are native and which are exotic. However, we can’t be so naive as to ignore species because they are microscopic or nearly so, even though this is common practice by all environmental organizations, governmental and private. Manatees, bears, and panthers are important because they have large home ranges, but bacteria, algae, and fungi are far more important in healthy ecosystems, even though they are excluded from consideration (are not listed) under the United States Endangered Species Act and are not usually discussed at environmental meetings. People must conceptualize in terms of total biodiversity, because impact does not always increase with size. We obviously don’t discount the thousands of viruses and bacteria which cause human, animal, and plant diseases, so why would we ignore any organism because we can’t see it or because it is small?

Florida is experiencing the worst biodiversity crisis in the continental United States Let’s first consider the plants. The state has more than 4,000 native and exotic plant species, distributed in 81 plant communities, as defined by Myers and Ewel in Ecosystems of Florida (1990). Approximately eight percent of Florida’s native plants are endemic, found only in Florida. Almost 21 percent or over 530 plant species are endangered or threatened. This is a higher percentage in trouble than anywhere in the United States except Hawaii. Well over 900 of Florida’s over 4,000 plants are exotic, and we keep bringing in new ones. Quite a few exotic plants are extreme pests, called invasive exotics. Again, only Hawaii has a higher percentage of exotic plant species.

Florida has approximately 668 species of native terrestrial and freshwater vertebrates, 17 percent endemic (found only in Florida). Approximately 110 species and subspecies of Florida vertebrates are listed as either endangered or threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). This is approximately fifteen percent of the fauna, the third highest total in the United States, after Hawaii and California.

The number of endangered and threatened vertebrates in Florida is actually higher than this. Listing of species and implementation of recovery plans under the ESA has stalled for many years, due to bad politics leading to under-funding. Under-funding of whole organism research in the field is not just a federal problem. It occurs across the board, at federal, state, county, and city levels. Our institutions of higher learning emphasize the lab sciences over the field sciences, in terms of the distribution of research dollars. We know more about our moon than we do about our terrestrial soils and our oceans! We are far, far away from ever even describing all the species of the earth, let alone knowing anything about them! This is ironic in Florida, where well over six billion dollars will be spent buying public land from 1970 to 1999, without even knowing what is living on those lands.

Land must be properly managed to promote evolutionary levels of biodiversity. This costs money but has greater societal rewards than anything we can do. Unfortunately, there always seems to be money to commercialize public lands, but never enough to remove exotic plants before they get out of control. A major step in management is knowing the status of at least some of the species living on the land, which only can be discovered by perpetually funded, scientifically rigorous, labor intensive, population number and distribution estimates (ground truthing). Since population health can change very quickly, repetitive perpetual monitoring is required. Only a very few Florida vertebrates are well surveyed, such as the Florida manatee, Florida panther, and Bald eagle. Because of lack of money and interest, decision-makers are forced to rely instead on cheaper mathematical modeling, which at our present level of expertise cannot substitute for thorough field surveying.

The number of invertebrates (animals without bony vertebrae protecting their spinal cord) in Florida is unknown, but probably is in the neighborhood of 50,000 species. No one has the vaguest idea how many of these are threatened or endangered or already beyond recovery. This is especially disturbing because biologists understood a long time ago that invertebrates are critical to the survival of the plants and vertebrates.

Florida’s natural communities are threatened by continued human population growth and the seemingly inevitable results, increasing rates of material and energy consumption and associated habitat destruction. Our state’s current growth rate of 2.6% is greater than India or China; our rate of habitat loss exceeds the rate of loss of the world’s rainforests. A Defenders of Wildlife report ranks Florida as the state most vulnerable to loss of its native ecosystems (Noss and Peters. 1995. Endangered Ecosystems; A Status Report on America’s Vanishing Habitat and Wildlife). The report finds that at the current rate of land conversion the entire state would be covered by development in one more lifetime of 70 years. Five of twenty cities in the United States experiencing the worst urban sprawl are located in Florida, according to a 1998 Sierra Club report.

Since around 1970, the political and biological solution to Florida’s biodiversity crisis has been to buy private land with public dollars. Florida had the best land purchasing program in the world for ten years, Preservation 2000 (1991-2000). This leadership has continued at a lower level of success for another ten years under the Florida Forever Act (2001-10), when funding isn’t reduced by the Florida Legislature and the Governor. Unfortunately, many Florida politicians, government decision-makers, and private landowners consider managing public lands primarily for intrinsic natural values to be a waste of public money, as well as dangerously threatening to their personal economic prosperity. Multiple uses of public lands, in its present actualization, weakens the primary purpose of the state land-buying programs, which is to preserve biodiversity. The best example of this in Florida is the present excessive emphasis on silviculture, managing public land for commercial pine trees. Another example is Florida’s tiny amount of legally designated wilderness, which has not increased significantly almost since the Federal Wilderness Act was passed. Vehicles and roads are disallowed in wilderness and fires burn themselves out rather than put out heroically at great expense. There is great political resistance to wilderness, because it "locks up" a public, non-taxed investment, with only a tiny minority taking the time and effort to benefit from walking and camping out in it. In truth, maximum protection of public land through wilderness designation increases the probability we will have a few places in Florida where historic, pre-industrial rates of species evolution come somewhat close to occurring, providing organism refugia to re-colonize all less well protected lands where extinction rates are higher.

Even though one could never tell this from attending a Florida Chapter Sierra Club meeting, Florida is in many ways ahead of the pack in its environmental laws and awareness. The reason for this is the nearly eighty million tourists a year, the largest industry in the state. Without the tourists, state government would collapse for lack of funds. Tourists don’t like environmentally dirty vacations! We are fortunate that Florida has natural resource agencies and nonprofit organizations that have been progressive with respect to identifying areas of ecological sensitivity and value strategic habitat conservation areas of high ecological sensitivity. Strategic habitat conservation areas, water resource areas, and a statewide ecological network have been identified through mostly preliminary data inventories and assessment and geographic information system (GIS) mapping. The results show that minimally an estimated 33 percent of the state needs to be under public or private conservation management to protect Florida’s biodiversity.

It may seem reassuring that Florida has over 9 million acres of land in public ownership, over 26 percent of the state’s terrestrial surface (Florida Natural Areas Inventory; March, 2003). But these lands are not safe, just because they are in public ownership. People place extreme demands on public lands for incompatible "multiple uses," and multiple abuses: logging, pipeline corridors, highways, surface water retention behind dams, injection of surface waters into the aquifer, excessive hunting, fishing, and other recreational activity and infrastructure, such as caused by jet skis, off-road vehicles, all terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, horses, parking lots, and even too many hikers, too many cabins and toilets for huge and ever increasing numbers of tourists (79,800,000 in 2005) and residents (over 17,000,000 in 2005). The impacts of 97,000,000 humans a year on Florida, 1,656 people for every square mile, are staggering.

Florida’s natural resource agencies must enforce environmental laws to preserve biodiversity. In the early 1970’s the nation and many states including Florida finally passed some environmental laws with teeth. Unfortunately, those laws, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, have been weakened over the years. And a lot of anti-environmental legislation has been passed since then. Thus, Florida’s lands and waters are still polluted. For example, generating electricity by burning coal, petroleum, tires, and natural gas could be essentially pollution free today, by using the most modern technologies. Airborne mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, fine particulates, etc. don’t stay airborne, so they must not ever come out of power plant stacks. But all of Florida’s power plants use out of date pollution control technologies, because people demand cheap electricity more than they do keeping their own health. Also, agricultural fertilizers and animal and human waste enrichment our ecosystems with nitrate and phosphate, greatly modifying normal biodiversity. There is very poor enforcement of agricultural practices in Florida, even though these pollutants quickly get into our drinking water. The reason is that agriculture is Florida’s second largest industry, and Tallahassee is loaded with agricultural lobbyists. Unfortunately, enforcement in Florida has always been under-funded and poorly administered, even if it is a tourist state. Traditional methods of policing and fining are not universally applied for environmental violations, just like they are not for traffic violations. And imprisonment of incorrigible major offenders almost never occurs. Sierra Club wants our environmental laws enforced and that is the basis of most of our actions; such as endorsing candidates, lobbying for better legislation, and filing legal suits.

It should be possible not to make criminals out of honest, if misguided people. Proactive experimental methods are occurring in Florida, instituted both independently by private owners and through public-private partnerships. Citizens aren’t losing their liberty, they are gaining tools to responsibly keep those rights and their health. For example, selling a conservation easement to government or a private land trust allows the private landowner to continue farming and forestry, permanently protects their land from further development, and to receive a handsome lump sum payment. Everyone wins, sometimes even the developers. It is very well known that open protected land next to one’s home increases its value, both in terms of appraised value and owner enjoyment.

A controversial public-private partnership has been instituted by the Suwannee River Water Management District, to reduce fecal and fertilizer pollution from dairy operations and row crop agriculture, respectively. The district now uses public dollars to pay part of the cost for settling ponds, etc. to break down dairy cow waste on site. Dairy cow operations have recently become huge in Florida, typically 800 animals in a herd. Instead of enforcing the United States Clean Water Act and making the dairy owners pay the full cost to inactivate the waste, the district is in a financial and advisory partnership with business, using your money to help pay for legally required pollution control. The direct public cost of building digesters and retention ponds for millions of tons of dairy cow waste probably gives the public a greater financial return than having dairy operators increase the wholesale price of milk to pay for required environmental protection. Dairy farmers don’t carry the entire environmental cost for these huge operations, the result of economy of scale in a state which refuses to control its population. Dairy operators don’t get fined, since almost every dairy is participating, and operators happily abide by "best management practices," since their bottom line is enhanced and they get advice and help rather than inspections and police action. Since the financial cost for the public is similar for these two approaches and the pollution gets reduced either way, this public subsidy may be a wiser approach than suing the district and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for not enforcing the Clean Water Act, which has recently occurred. The State of Florida and the Suwannee River Water Management District lost this suit in 2005.

Environmentalists must look to at least some non-punitive alternatives for environmental protection or face a failed rear guard action against always powerful and entrenched "enemies." Political, legislative, and legal "environmental victories" all seem to turn out to be short term and often further polarize one group of people against another. This makes little sense over the long haul, since the goal is to have all people voluntarily do the environmentally right things. It is not likely dairies will go back to small herd operations dispersed throughout Florida, the "good old days" before population explosion resulted in large-scale corporate milk production.

Humans must stop destroying Florida’s natural habitats, converting them into urban development for more and more in-migrants. Having an old fashioned Florida outdoor experience is getting harder and harder to do with 97,000,000 competitors! More and more, we watch television wildlife rather than a Florida panther or a Florida Scrub jay. Do we only want to scream with 90,000 others at a Florida Gators football game, or canoe the Suwannee River without three idiots on jetskis playing chicken with our canoe at 50 mph? Do you want to cook in the Florida sun for a half hour to drive ten miles or walk ten blocks to shopping, the public library, and a city commission meeting, after watching a Tufted titmouse at home, safely feeding, while observed hungrily by the indoor neighborhood house cat? Every time we weaken another link in Florida’s biodiversity, our species is moving toward a world without freedom and hope, a boring world with low quality of life. Instead of growing more and more people with more and more crazy "needs," let’s grow fewer people living closer to nature, each other, and our own evolution. It’s a lot cheaper and a lot more rewarding.

General Methods of the Biodiversity Committee

Almost every human activity impacts biodiversity in some way. Thus, everyone reduces biodiversity and must be able and willing to keep those losses to a minimum. All Floridians must seek solutions to the state’s biodiversity crisis, since well-being depends on solutions, not fruitless confrontation between interest groups. The biodiversity committee does not recommend the "stakeholder" approach to finding resolutions that work, as now in vogue in state government. State agencies must take the lead, as mandated by environmental law on the books, not throw all the interest groups into a room and expect something other than chaos to happen.

Because biodiversity is everyone’s responsibility, the Biodiversity Committee speaks to "your issue," and you speak to "our issue." No Sierra Club issue chair should fear losing his or her delegated responsibility. The biodiversity issue chair assumes all issue chairs are members of the Biodiversity Committee, as well as every member of the Florida Chapter. Protecting wild places has been a fundamental pursuit of Sierra Club members since 1892.

In 2003 a Public Lands Use Report was begun by Laurie Macdonald and Christine Small, funded by the Florida Chapter, summarizing the ways our public lands are used and impacted by public and private concerns in Florida. This report was completed in January, 2004, and a copy sent to the Division of State Lands. We anticipate the report being used to help guide our issue and action priorities and to educate the public and decision makers.

As much as possible we participate when state and federal agencies are required by law to hear testimony from the public. We speak for the Florida Chapter of Sierra Club and know this has an impact. Every year the Florida Legislature introduces over a thousand bills, many affecting biodiversity in direct and indirect ways. We try, with many others, to kill the worst of these bills and to improve workable bills to insure inclusion of natural resource protection language. Our committee, if larger, could increase its impact in responding to more problems around the state. Our work is most closely aligned with the Florida Chapter Public Lands Committee, but we see the need to encourage new activists for all conservation issue committees in the Florida Chapter.

For 2004 the Biodiversity Committee set as a goal the sponsorship and organization of a Florida Endangered Species Network (FESN), to keep activists in communication and provide intellectual and emotional support and information sharing. On December 8, 2004, in Orlando, conservationists, scientists, planners, public interest attorneys, and others shared information and inspiration to solve the state’s biodiversity crisis. The initial forum included people who have employed successful strategies and understand the pitfalls, who are willing to discuss new innovative initiatives. The Pegasus Foundation and Defenders of Wildlife hosted the forum and, together with Sierra Club and other entities, have now institutionalized the FESN.

Threats

We must always watchdog the Florida Legislature (that august body tasked by the Florida Constitution with serving all the public). Almost every year the legislature raids the supposedly protected environmental trust funds to pump up general revenue, deliberately reduced by passing billions of dollars of tax relief to Florida businesses and the rich. This is called letting the environment pay for itself. Another administration favorite is flat-lining state employment opportunities and privatizing government services through lucrative contracts. The Florida legislature in 2005 placed a hiring freeze on the five water management districts for new permanent employees. As the desired result, hundreds of people have been hired on contract since then, weakening the morale of permanent staff and reducing institutional memory. This is an attempt to weaken these five independent taxing authorities and sets the stage to try again for legislation to pump freshwater around the state. The public is ill served by the weakening of state government, but less government is always good, according to those in power in Tallahassee. Business, of course, loves this change of direction, which started in 1999. Gone are many hard working, long-term government employees, along with their honest, reliable, modest cost expertise, lost in the name of efficiency (quick profit taking). Perhaps, the weakening of Florida government will turn around with a new Governor this year.

On the agency side of government, nowhere can one see administration efficiency at work better than in our state park system. Just the booking fee for a tent site exceeds the old total cost when park service personnel did the booking rather than a private company. A greatly increased charge for the cheapest way to stay overnight reduces the use of our state parks by the poor and young families, along with loss of environmental education benefits. How else will our state park system become financially self sufficient? Gone are the days when it was understood everyone should financially support Florida’s state parks, residents and tourists, whether they personally use them or not. The only public now using our parks are those who can afford the higher direct costs, like those 80,000,000 tourists financially supporting our state every year. What kind of overnight accommodations is the Division of Recreation and Parks building? We now get full-size $250,000 houses renting at $100.00 a day and huge motor home sites and upscale bathrooms, instead of new tent sites. This is what the abused public has always wanted, we are told from Tallahassee.

Florida has already lost fifty percent of its historic wetlands and the rest are degraded. If anything can stop the state’s population explosion, it is lack of fresh water for more humans. Every drop of fresh water that goes to a present or new resident doesn’t go to the rest of Florida’s biodiversity, unless it is recycled, treated effluent, pumped back out of a now polluted Floridan aquifer. Florida is too flat to expect reservoirs to hold enough water, and desalination of sea water will always require a lot of energy (money) to produce. Nonetheless, these two methods are already utilized in Florida, and we will see more reservoirs and desal plants, along with more pumping of polluted water into the aquifer to be reused later. The water management districts are frantically making projections when the state will not have enough water for further human population increase, which takes priority over Florida’s natural ecosystems, especially upland ecosystems. This human population has been on an almost linear and huge annual increase since 1950, at an even higher slope than before 1950, with never any major diminution over a 55 year period. Will it be 2020 when there will no longer be enough water for another incoming human, the only crisis of interest to developer controlled politicians? No one knows, because no one can predict when the next severe drought will hit the state, or how many hurricanes we will experience so people will worry about where to live rather than how often they can water their lawns, or how effective water conservation measures will be, or how much recycled water people will drink before becoming sick, discovering why, and making a big stink. One thing is sure – Florida’s politicians will not discuss an endpoint to the human population growth, let alone put other endeavors above tourism to slow down the increase, until the crisis is totally out of control for every living thing in the state, the humans and the non-humans. Thus, biodiversity will continue to get an ever shrinking portion of the water directly from rainfall, until some tipping point is reached, when the ecosystem collapses are so bad that even a political majority cannot ignore the nature part of the crisis. Then, when it is too late because the extinction events will all be over except for the humans, the politicians will hold their first special session of the legislature to start discussions about the water and population crises for humans, linked together at last by absolute necessity! Instead of dealing with an obvious state-wide crisis now or fifty years ago by addressing the real problem, when the quality of life is still better than for the majority of humans on earth, the Florida Legislature may put forth another wrong-headed water bill as soon as 2006, to transfer water from places where humans and biodiversity are still in some state of balance, mostly in North Florida, to high density urban areas toward the South (Tampa/St Petersburg; Orlando; Miami). The only way the present legislature can do this is to remove the obstacles placed there (by politicians!) in a past instant of enlightenment; take away the independent taxing authority of the five water management districts, put a super board in charge, build the pipes and the pumps, and let-er-rip. Intra-district water transfers have been increasing for over a decade now, very quietly, but none-the-less have resulted in intra-district water wars, as in the South Florida and Southwest Florida Water Management Districts. This has happened when people lost their lake front property values because their lakes dried up (SW District) or when the price of water got too high and insufficient in amount (South District). Sierra Club will continue to provide input to legislators on the water needs of natural systems, over the needs of more and more new residents.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had a major reorganization in 2004 (legislation passed in 2003). This change has not weakened the Commission (Sierra Club did not oppose it). Other legislation on which we will assist includes Florida Forever Act funding and policy, land management, surplusing, and multiple use, transportation and land use as they effect habitat protection and connectivity, and, of course, any wildlife bills that may arise.

In terms of federal action we would like to send occasional alerts to mobilize activists to contact their congressional representatives when strategic votes on the Endangered Species Act, Florida Wildlife Grants Program, and Land and Water Conservation Fund arise. There may be opportunities for Chapter activists to lobby in Washington on these issues. The Sierra Club nationally is working with other groups throughout 2006 on protecting the Endangered Species Act. It has been a constant struggle protecting the ESA since December 28, 1973 when it was signed into law. A bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives in late 2005 would finally destroy the ESA, if the Senate agrees to the wording in early 2006

Biodiversity Legislation, Rulemaking, and Legal Action in 2006

The Florida Acquisition and Restoration Council (ARC) will meet four times in 2006, as usual each year, to revise the list of lands to be hopefully purchased under the Florida Forever Act and sequentially review land management plans required for every piece of state land. Although there are still four years left on the Act, ARC members are worried that not all the $3 billion will be spent before the program sunsets at the end of 2009. Land prices in Florida are increasing much faster than appraised value, and, by law, the state cannot buy land above appraised value. Thus, the list of desired purchases is not being rapidly reduced through purchase, because the deals are not being made nearly as fast as in the past. It is unlikely funding for state land purchase will extend beyond 2009 at anywhere near the present level, but efforts to do so will start in 2006.

Bond issues have now been passed in 20 counties out of Florida’s 67, by referendum, to buy additional public land fee simple or buy conservation easements, so the land can still be farmed or logged, but can no longer be developed with houses. As the population in some of the other 47 counties becomes financially and educationally ready, the ideal would be to repeat the now standard political process to institute more county land buying programs. Some counties will never need a county land buying program, because of large percentages of federally and state owned lands already. But this process certainly has not run its course yet in Florida and has enormously increased the chances of survival of Florida’s remaining biodiversity. None of these county programs have much money for the next steps, the management of county owned lands (controlled burns, exotic plant removal, etc.) and opening up parcels to passive public recreation (hiking, bird watching, canoeing, etc.). The need for active public recreation (golf, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, soccer fields, etc.) competes for the same limited dollars, along with all the new infrastructure and maintenance demanded by new and old residents.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission holds several 2 day meetings around the state a year, a selected portion of which we attend, speaking on biodiversity issues. Our committee members have not watch-dogged the public meetings of the five water management districts as well as they should be, but other Sierrans are doing so to some extent at the group level. One never knows far in advance when the Florida Cabinet will vote on an issue with biodiversity impact, but at least one visit per year to Tallahassee to testify before this body is required. Of course, the 4,000+ employee Department of Environmental Protection will continue to take public testimony in many forums, and our committee members hopefully will occasionally be there to speak or write letters.

The committee will hopefully continue working on two long-term campaign strategies that the Chapter has developed. The Nature Coast Campaign, ideally led by a Nature Coast Issue Chair, encompasses counties from Leon to Citrus along the Gulf of Mexico. The Florida Chapter is helping to save the largest and one of the very few large blocks of modestly disturbed lands left in Florida and the nation. The second continuing effort is to support buying more private forested lands in Florida and Georgia’s POGO (Pinhook Swamp, Osceola National Forest, Greater Okefenokee National Refuge). In 2003 POGO officially became a program of the Florida Wildlife Federation (FWF), under the direction of Larry Thompson in Tallahassee. Both Auth and Judy Hancock, Sierra Club Public Lands Issue Chair (now deceased), participated in the first organizational meeting of POGO-FWF in White Springs (Feb, 2003). Macdonald participates in POGO for Defenders of Wildlife. The "Pinhook Connector" project (turning Pinhook Swamp from a private into a public asset) is now more than half completed. We will be working closely with both the Land Acquisition and Public Lands Issue Chairs on this joint effort. A memorial fund was set up in 2002 for Pinhook Protection due to the untimely death of U.S. Forest Service employee and land acquisition specialist Chris Zajcek. Judy Hancock was added to this memorial fund upon her death on June 28, 2004. Contributions given to the Sierra Club Florida Chapter in Chris’ and Judy’s names will be used under the guidance of Kathy Cantwell, Public Lands Issue Chair.

The Florida Chapter’s participation in Habitat for Bears (HFB) is overseen by Laurie Macdonald of Defenders of Wildlife. Sierra Club is a partner in this project, designed to protect the Florida Black bear and associated biological diversity in Florida. Examples of 2005 work include monitoring funds generated from the "Conserve Wildlife" Florida license plate to be sure they are spent for appropriate purposes, commenting on the proposed Florida Black Bear State Conservation Strategy, and participating in the aforementioned Black Bear Festival.

The committee needs to coordinate efforts with all Sierra Club group conservation committees throughout the state and the rest of the Florida Chapter Conservation Committee to increase the environmental citizen input to state agencies, state legislators, the Governor, and Florida Cabinet. E-mail, telephone calls, public testimony, and letter writing are the basic tools of this activism.

Recent Activities

David Auth retired as a paid professional herpetologist in 1999, at the age of 54. His volunteer work for Sierra Club started in 1978, helping lay out the group newsletter. He has been recording secretary (one year), administrative chair (one year), conservation chair (two years), archivist (13 years) and biodiversity co-issue or issue chair (6 years) for the Florida Chapter and held a voting office in the Suwannee St Johns Group of Sierra Club for 14 years, from 1989 through 2005. He will hold no voting office at the group level in 2006, devoting more time to being the chapter biodiversity issue chair.

Here are some of his issue chair activities for 2005, other than telephone and written communication:

Jan – Tried unsuccessfully to get Alachua County to chip and ship its hurricane wood debris to a Georgia Pacific pulp mill in Putnam County to produce heat, as the City of Gainesville did, rather than dispose of it by open burning and causing a respiratory health hazard.

- Started a long-term project on the spring-fed Ichetucknee River, a state park, to monitor the effects of human generated pollution on aquatic life. He became a member of the Ichetucknee Working Group led by Jim Stevenson, recently retired employee of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

- Completed the last of my first four year term as a member of the Land Conservation Board of Alachua County, to spend $29,000,000 plus grants and other funds to preserve conservation lands inside the county. Elected by the county commission to another four year term.

Feb – Participated in the first rally for the Oklawaha River at Rodman Reservoir and Ravine Gardens State Park.

Feb – Represented Sierra Club at the University of Florida’s Environmental Law Conference in Gainesville.

Mar - Organized a Gainesville City Commission race political forum as Sierra Club group political chair.

Mar – Field trip by air boat on Orange Creek, with a St Johns River Water Management District employee, to assess the district’s wetland management strategy.

Apr – Attended a meeting of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Tallahassee.

May – Attended the first posthumous Judy Hancock POGO meeting at Ocean Pond in the Osceola National Forest.

June - Dec – Got involved delaying the proposed construction of a 220 megawatt coal fired power plant for North-central Florida by Gainesville Regional Utilities. It was announced in Jan, 2006 that 100 million dollars would be spent building pollution controls on the present old coal plant, with or without a new plant being constructed. The mercury pollution of this old coal plant will now be practically eliminated, along with major reductions in nitrogen and sulfur oxides and particulates. Someday, Floridians may again be able to eat fish safely as much as they want, and all vertebrates will be able to breathe clean air again.

Jun – Participated in the second United States Geological Survey Suwannee River Basin and Estuary Workshop in Folkston, Georgia.

Sept – Lectured on the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail at the University of Florida, for a graduate course in eco-tourism.

Oct – Participated on an environmental ethics panel for 110 Eastside High School seniors in Gainesville.

Nov – Participated at the Osceola National Forest U.S. Forest Service office in oral discussion of forest thinning to prevent wild fire inside private in-holdings.

Dec – Attended the Sierra Club Florida Chapter Conservation Conference and mini-Flexcom.

What can you do?

The Florida Chapter has approximately 30,000 members. If just one percent of our members would volunteer twenty hours a week on environmental matters, for free, that would be 312,000 free hours of labor a year. Assuming a reasonable pay equivalent of $10 an hour, this would equal $3,312,000 a year. The present budget of the Florida Chapter of Sierra Club is slightly over $200,000. Obviously, the power of Sierra Club is the action of its volunteers, when it occurs. There are plenty of opportunities for individual action. Learning about the specifics of an issue is not all that difficult. It is the obligation of every voting adult to go to city and county commission meetings, get on at least one local volunteer board, and become educated about the issues and the political candidates. Although no one has a comprehensive list, it would not an unreasonable guess that there are at least a thousand volunteer environmental organizations in Florida at any one time, mostly one issue groups organized to fight one environmental disaster in the making. We have made it abundantly clear above that Florida is in environmental dis-equilibrium, in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. The important thing is to get angry about is happening to this state and do a lot of somethings, both as an individual who has to consume to live and as a citizen who votes and can sue, when you have standing. It is not the objective of this committee to make you do anything your conscience and your children’s futures do not dictate. And it is not our objective to tell you what to say or do.