Officials Get Earful about State Park BY JOHN HENDERSON 522-5108 | @PCNHjohn jhenderson@pcnh PANAMA CITY — Rhonda LaVite has enjoyed Shell Island with her family for years. “It’s just my happy place,” she said. “I just enjoy Shell Island so much. It’s just so calm and peaceful. It’s beautiful. There’s just a sense of fellowship when you go out there. Everybody is friends and happy.” She was among several hundred people who attended a workshop Wednesday night at Gulf Coast State College to offer comments on a 10-year management plan for St. Andrews State Park. They encouraged state park officials to continue to allow them to boat out to the island for private gatherings with friends, their pets and coolers. The session was part of a yearlong process to update the plan. State officials took written comments from the audience. The park includes a portion of Shell Island. The state owns 259 of the 317 lots in the subdivision on the island and has been buying the private lots from willing sellers. Some residents still are irate after they were cited on the Fourth of July weekend in 2006 for bringing their dogs to Shell Island. But park officials said at the meeting that is no longer occurring. Instead, they are focused on educating people who visit Shell Island about ways not to disturb nesting birds. Park officials said more than 870,000 people enjoyed St. Andrews State Park in the past year. Martha Robinson, communications manager for the state Division of Recreation and Parks, said there are no plans to stop boaters from enjoying Shell Island. “We are not proposing anything at this time,” she said. “And we want to listen to them. We want to hear their concerns. I’m a boater. I like to go on my boat with my dogs. I don’t think we would propose taking that away from them. What we want to do is balance recreation with protecting the natural resources.” Still, several residents said they believed the state is going too far in its regulations and enforcement. Steven Burch was among them. “This is all underworld government,” Burch said. “This is a taking of private property and resources. I’m going through this in Washington County right now. “They have comprehensive plans, land-use plans, land development codes that are totally unconstitutional. You can’t do this; you can’t do that on your own land. It’s a land-grab. It is a grabbing of private property rights.” Sine Murray, assistant chief of the Office of Park Planning for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said there has been some misinformation that the state would like to include the area 400 feet out from the shoreline in the park boundaries. But Ben Walsh, a fishing captain, said park officials seemed to have backtracked on the subject. He said he was concerned that if that area of the shoreline became part of the park, customers on his boat would not be able to drink a beer or fish in that area. “(Park officials) totally changed their tune,” he said. “They got negative emails. If you give the government an inch they will take a foot.” Julie Wraithmell, director of wildlife conservation for Audubon Florida, said park officials have a difficult task to balance the management of natural resources in the park and recreational uses. “St. Andrews, and particularly Shell Island, have a lot of resources that occur nowhere else in the state, particularly rare and endangered birds,” Wraithmell aid. “Right now the Park Service is struggling to balance recreational use with the survival of those species. I know there is a lot of concern from the residential use, but there are also a lot of Floridians that are really worried that these resources won’t be there for their kids to enjoy.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 11:47:54 +0000
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