LWVOCs newest member, Maria Bolton-Joubert, is quoted again in Kevin Spears article detailing the failure of our current government to set aside conservation land by properly funding the Florida Forever program. With a construction tractor parked nearby as a reminder of whats to come, a volunteer arriving at a patch of scrappy shrubs and bare sand in southwest Orange County told others to have a good cry and then get to rescuing Floridas original species. They shouldered spades and fanned out across future Dr. Phillips suburbia to dig up plants from what nature had laid out as Floridas version of desert. The terrain, called scrub, is the dunes and vegetation that were the first in Florida to emerge from the receding ocean. Its where life began in the state, an ancient life now winking out despite its survivalist genetics and native toughness. They are about to bulldoze over some of the last scrub land in Orange County, said Maria Bolton-Joubert, an environmentalist helping in the rescue. Once its gone, its gone forever. What took over a million years to evolve and sustain itself will be destroyed in a matter of months. It will be the second tract of the Kerina at Parkside development, which was approved in 2005 to put 1,557 homes on 485 acres in the Dr. Phillips community. Kerina at Parksides lawyer, Miranda Fitzgerald of Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed in Orlando, said the owners have been sensitive to scrub loss and prior to development set aside two acres for conservation. They felt they have been much more proactive than anybody else out there in being cooperative and assisting the effort to help preserve the scrub habitat, Fitzgerald said. She said if authorities dont want to adopt uniform protections for scrub, then state and environmental groups, if concerned enough, ought to be able to purchase it. Scrub embodies the harshness of ancient dunes and ridges of sand that bump up along the states interior. Rain on the rugged environment is gone in a flash, soaking into sand that is often dazzlingly white and burning hot. Its the most amazing community of plants, said Niki Cribbs, an environmental scientist, taking a day off from work. There are all different colors, shapes and sizes. Some of them, if you get really close, look like miniature bonsai trees. But scrub has no defense from developers, who have targeted the land as easiest to scrape bare and build on. Many scrub species are endangered and found nowhere else in the world but, unlike rare wildlife, get only a sliver of protection from state or federal law. The habitat has been sought by people building roads, railroads and subdivisions, said Jack Stout, a University of Central Florida professor emeritus, who took part in the rescue last week. This has been going on since European mans occupation of Florida. Now, of the tiny remnants of scrub left, crews are about to descend on a 36-acre patch to construct 112 homes along a long loop of new street. Many of the dozen volunteer rescuers who assembled next to Dr. Phillips Community Park off South Apopka-Vineland Road lamented or simmered quietly. During a rest, a Native Plant Society member stepped forward to say, We do not like doing this. We do not want to give the message to developers that destruction of scrub is OK as long we rescue plants, Jackie Rolly said. The exercise, however, is too familiar, she said. I told my group to have a good cry and then get to work. But the organizer of the salvage effort was eager to provide a different view. We have been very fortunate that these landowners have been working with us, said Juliet Rynear, a Rare Plant Conservation Program specialist at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales. I think some landowners fear that while we are out here collecting plants we may see some rare bird or something that will stop their development in its tracks, Rynear said. That is not how it works. We have signed contracts with this landowner, saying we will not impact development. Rynears mission is to collect as many species as possible for planting at conservation sites and keeping samples in a genetic library. We need to understand we are on the planet at this particular time, she said, because you have this support of these very diverse plant communities. They set the groundwork for all other species to exist and thrive. kspear@tribune Ancient scrub plants rescued from development orlandosentinel/news/os-orange-scrub-rare-plant-rescue-20140822,0,4039178.story
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 13:34:55 +0000
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