Cutting Edge Conservation >

Audubon of Florida is fortunate to have a unique partnership with its forty-three chapters, taking advantage their on-the-ground perspective and experience to help plot the conservation course of the state organization. Chapters contribute to this vision through participation in regional conservation committees, or RCCs, which meet quarterly to help chapters coordinate with one another as well as contribute to the state organization’s priorities. One of the annual products from each of these RCCs is the compilation of a conservation priority resolution for the region, detailing the region’s priorities and how the chapters and state organization staff will work together to meet these challenges.

Learn more about our statewide policy priorities, or click here for the complete text of our regional conservation priorities.

Everglades Ecosystem

For decades, this magnificent system has been ditched, drained, polluted, invaded by exotic species, and paved over for buildings and roads. As a result, many species are jeopardized, and the wading bird super-colonies that once symbolized the ecosystem have seriously declined. Birdlife still serves as an indicator of ecological health, and the best measure of success for the Everglades restoration is the return of abundant bird populations.

Now, due in part to Audubon’s advocacy, a number of restoration and protection projects are underway. These include the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), Modified Water Delivery, the Everglades Construction and Stormwater Projects, the Lake Okeechobee Protection Project and Watershed Plan, Kissimmee River Restoration and others. Restoration is hindered by inadequate funding and faltering government commitment to full restoration, as well as growth-related competition for land and water. Restoration takes place acre by acre, project by project, and place by place. It involves many individual projects (CERP alone includes 68 restoration components) and Audubon is focusing on those projects that have the greatest promise to improve ecological conditions throughout the greater Everglades system.

Goals:

• Re-establish historic hydrologic flows through the Everglades and to Florida Bay through the C-111 project, raising or removing the Tamiami Trail roadbed, and completing the restoration of the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands.
• Make progress in achieving water reservations for CERP projects by encouraging state agencies to reserve water for the environment while rolling back allocations of water to urban areas.
• Encourage South Florida local governments to comply requirements that all new growth be met with alternative water supplies.
• Improve and protect water quality through enforcement of laws, implementing the low-phosphorous residential fertilizer rule, eliminating land disposal of sewage sludge in Lake Okeechobee Watershed, pushing government to implement TMDLs for the Lake and its tributaries, and increasing the effectiveness of on-farm BMPs.

Southwest Florida Ecosystem

This area has three signature species that help the public identify with the need to protect and restore land and waters: Florida panthers, which require large unrestricted territories, nesting Wood Storks, which depend on seasonal wetlands for forage, and juvenile Snook, which require healthy estuarine environments. All species are profoundly affected by watershed management, local land use plans and development activities. These three species serve vital roles as indicator species, helping gauge the effectiveness of ecosystem-wide protection and restoration efforts.

Audubon’s commitment to Wood Stork, Panther and Snook abundance emerges from the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and extends through the vital watersheds in the region, including the critical habitats of Babcock Ranch, Caloosahatchee River, Charlotte Harbor and Fisheating Creek. Millions of people have visited the Sanctuary and learned about nature and ecosystems through that experience.

Goals:

• Develop public and political support to protect and restore critical components of the Big Cypress, Corkscrew, Caloosahatchee, Fisheating Creek, and Charlotte Harbor ecosystems.
• Support new state, local, water management district and regional land acquisition programs and insist on aggressive efforts to restore and manage all lands, including controlling exotic species and using prescribed fire where appropriate.
• Initiate and support innovative approaches to land use planning, complementing land acquisition, that take advantage of transfer of development rights and other land use-based approaches to setting aside conservation areas and direct incompatible land uses away from conservation areas. Be involved directly in the land use planning, infrastructure development, and regulatory decisions that will shape the future of the region.
• Advocate regionally-based and proactive wildlife protection policies, to complement land acquisition and planning efforts, at every level of government, but focused particularly on local policies and comprehensive plans.

Florida Gulf Coast Ecosystem

Florida’s Gulf coastal areas include a rich assemblage of essential habitats used by diverse species of birds, fish and other wildlife and plants. However, much of Florida’s central Gulf Coast is now altered, disturbed, and dominated by human use as population growth and development have affected habitats that once supported abundant and balanced populations of birds, fish, and other wildlife, including freshwater wetland foraging areas.

Populations of many coastal bird species are at risk due to alteration of coastal habitats and disturbance by people and their pets during annual nesting seasons, causing the death of eggs and young birds. Many species of colonial waterbirds, beach-nesting birds, and shorebirds, have declined in their historic ranges. Some are listed by federal and state agencies and require significant intervention and management efforts to prevent local extirpation or extinction. Audubon of Florida has identified more than 25 coastal Important Bird Areas in Florida, sites where birds gather in numbers to nest, forage, rest during migration, and over-winter.

Goals:

• Develop public and political support for strategies to protect and restore coastal habitats from the impacts of growth, altered watersheds and inappropriate human activity such as disturbance by humans, dogs and vehicles and predation by feral cats and other nuisance species.
• Oppose destructive coastal activities such as beach dredging, renourishment and coastal armoring and seek to strengthen and enforce existing laws to protect shore habitat. Evaluate the cause and effects on wildlife of beach raking of seaweed and red algae.
• Support outreach and education programs to encourage people, local governments and property owners to protect and restore coastal habitats and coastal bird populations.
• Support new state, local, water management district and regional land acquisition programs
• Push for reduced pollution, and improved water quality standards and programs to clean up polluted waterways. Promote monofilament clean-up campaigns.

Northwest Florida Ecosystem

The Northwest region provides critical stopover habitat and staging areas for neotropical migratory birds, is home to countless resident bird species and hosts significant numbers of wintering shorebirds and waterfowl. The diversity and abundance of individual species is of state and national significance.

Threats to the natural resources of the Northwest Region stem almost exclusively from the area’s recent, rapid population growth. Local Audubon Societies (chapters) and other groups have a history of advocacy on behalf of these systems. However, in face of rapid growth, a more comprehensive and ecosystem-driven plan is necessary for each of this region’s drainage basins.

Goals:

• Initiate and support innovative approaches to land use planning that employ transfers of development rights and green space preservation-type strategies to set aside conservation areas.
• Be involved directly in the land use planning, infrastructure development, and regulatory decisions that will shape the future of the region.
• Promote state, local, water management district and regional land acquisition programs and insist on aggressive efforts to control exotic species and use prescribed fire where appropriate.
• Support stronger policies and more effective actions to protect water resources including strict interpretation and enforcement of wetland, water quality and water supply laws.

Northeast Florida Ecosystem

The beaches of Northeast Florida are of critical significance to shorebirds including such imperiled species as Piping Plover, Least Tern, American Oystercatcher, Red Knot, and Gull-billed Tern. Portions of these beaches are critical to at least one of these species at any given time of year, and habitat quality in addition to quantity is essential to these birds’ future. The region’s marshes are also of critical importance and are essential as nurseries for fish and invertebrate stocks and shelter significant wading bird populations as well as secretive rails. Coastal maritime hammock is one of the most imperiled habitats of this region. When left in its natural state, it is one of the few remaining acceptable nesting locations for dwindling populations of Painted Buntings. Similarly, these hammocks provide essential autumn refueling sites for neotropical migrants and serve as first refuges upon their spring return. Inland, this region includes the lower St. Johns River, an incredible diversity of springsheds, as well as the significant expanse of the Osceola National Forest.

Goals:

• Develop public and political support for strategies to protect and restore regional habitats from the impacts of growth, watershed alteration and inappropriate human activity such as disturbance by humans, dogs, and vehicles and predation by feral cats.
• Take an active role in opposing destructive activities such as unnecessary deposition of sand on living shorelines, dredging, and coastal armoring projects that diminish the habitat value of these areas.
• Seek to strengthen and enforce existing laws to protect habitat and water resources.
• Support outreach and education programs to encourage people, local governments and property owners to protect habitats and bird populations of regional significance.
• Establish an Audubon office in the NE Florida coastal region.

Central Florida Ecosystem

Central Florida is growing at an extraordinary pace. Under current patterns of development, it is estimated an additional 1.1 million acres of native habitat and agricultural lands could give way to urban development. The remaining unprotected portions of the Wekiva, St. Johns, Green Swamp/Withlacoochee, and Upper Kissimmee and Lake Wales Ridge ecosystems are in the direct path of the Orlando area’s urban expansion. If continued, this sprawling development will result in loss or degradation of valuable wildlife habitat and agricultural lands as well as pollution, altered drainage and overuse of water resources.

However, there are a number of strategies that can limit the impacts of growth on the environment. Public programs to acquire, preserve and manage land, local government land use plans that require new development and redevelopment projects to set aside equivalent amounts of land for parks and preserves along with development features that preserve nature, prevent water pollution and require a landscape design that avoids wasteful uses of water are examples. Protecting and restoring habitat and enlisting and educating people to support a vision of Florida that balances human needs with the environment are essential.

Learn more about our work in Central Florida.

Goals:

• Develop public and political support for regional, multi-governmental plans to protect and restore the remaining components of the Central Florida region’s major ecosystems.
• Initiate and support innovative, sustainable approaches to land use planning including transfer of development rights and green space preservation-type approaches to setting aside conservation areas and rural and farm lands.
• Be involved in the land use planning, infrastructure development, and regulatory decisions that will shape the future of individual ecosystems and the region.
• Initiate and support new state, local, water management district and regional land acquisition programs which provide increased funding for land purchases and support efforts to better manage public lands.

Please support the 2008 Conservation Agenda by taking these actions:

Together we can mitigate the consequences of growth by protecting Florida’s land and water and our birds and other wildlife.