Coastal Wildlife Conservation and Shoreline Management

Title: Coastal Wildlife Conservation and Shoreline Management

Discussion Group Leaders: Blair Hayman and Tom Ostertag

The Coastal Wildlife Conservation Initiative (CWCI) is a partnership strategy to address coastal issues that impact wildlife and their habitat. The vision of this initiative is to ensure the long-term conservation of native wildlife in coastal ecosystems throughout Florida in balance with human activities. The key is overlap here, maintaining wildlife habitat and the conservation of natural resources along with human recreational and daily activities. Only then will the initiative and conservation in general gain full community support and action. Policy-makers will not enact that which is unpopular. Additionally, the public will not change their actions in a direction that adversely affects their current lifestyle.

CWCI Priority Issues

• Beach raking and wracking
• Disturbance of humans and pets on local flora and fauna.
• Protection of critical wildlife areas
• Coastal nourishment
• Alternatives to shoreline armoring and methods of stabilization

Discussion Topics

Which issues should be left to the state or federal government and which should be handled at the local level?

• Issues like invasive species (as in the case of popular Australian pines and the Brazilian pepper plant) and progressive shoreline hardening can and should be handled at the local level, by the community at large. This requires local officials, organizations, businesses and individuals to work together cooperatively. Issues regarding bird habitat and the creation and maintenance of rookeries might be led by the local, active Audubon society.
• Issues like habitat conservation and endangered species, while the support of the local community is essential, are primarily dealt with in creating policy on the federal level. The Environmental Protection Agency and its many branches and cooperative entities usually hold the heft on these issues.

What are some of the successes that have happened locally?

• Policies that have been enacted which prevent the raking of beach cover and debris essential to coastal bird habitat and reproduction. These ban beach raking when birds are present. Activists hope that the public will find the ease and cost-effectiveness innately present in letting the coast do its own thing. Many communities pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for this service which does a disservice to the native species’ habitat. Policies like this require consensus and cooperation of the state and local governments.
• The removal of invasive species on Bay Island (or Billy’s Creek Island). This has allowed the wider diversity which exists there now. This was largely taken on by individuals who bypassed the possible stagnation and time-loss that initially approaching local policy-makers might have brought.
• Encouraging residents to remove the invasive Australian pines from their property. This often offers residents a fuller, more unobstructed view from their windows and backyards of the bay and surrounding area. Planting mangroves (or maintaining those which are already there) may provide the same privacy that these pines had provided, and at the gain of the local ecosystem.
• Sea turtle protection campaigns which have worked marvelously in protecting local Floridian populations. Signs posted and barricades enacted throughout habitat or nests and on surrounding beach. This is an issue the community has really gotten behind cooperatively.

Next Steps

• Furthering communication with the public.
• Possible local campaign for coastal wildlife conservation; employing marketing techniques emphasizing what else there is to see at the beach beyond sand, sun and waves.
• Pulling all of the existing information out there into one public GIS interface. This could give the public awareness of access to what is out there and where.
• Continue the education of the community.