Comments sent to USFWS a couple of hours ago. Hopefully these comments along with other folks' comments designed to act as a silver bullet to kill this Headwaters dracula in a cloak bad idea NOW rather than later will be successful.
My compliments to all who tried their best to kill the Headwaters rather than play with this thing.
The comment period is open until midnight tomorrow for those still wanting to provide the Feds their thoughts on the bad idea at
evergladesheadwatersproposal@fws.gov******************* ******************** ****************
NWR Comments regarding Everglades Headwaters Refuge and Conservation Area
To: United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
From: Frank Hialeah, Florida 33013
Date: March 30, 2011
Re: Comments regarding USFWS scoping process and the Refuge concept specifically.
Scoping ProcessScoping meetings were held prior to distribution of any meaningful accurate detailed information that would have assisted attendees that weren’t already collaborating partners with USFWS. USFWS partners such as The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Audubon of Fla., Defenders of Wildlife, Fl Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to name a few were well prepared to provide coordinated comments to assist in generating the administrative record USFWS was looking to have established at their scoping meetings. TNC’s comments of March 2011 to USFWS verify they have been involved for over 2 years to develop the suite of properties they recommended to be targeted for inclusion. On the other hand the general public who the meeting schedule was sprung on with short notice had no comprehensive detailed information to base comments upon except the USFWS’s Headwaters deceptive propaganda available at USFWS’s project web site. This intentional USFWS tactic deprived a large segment of scoping meeting attendees the ability to actually provide comments during their allotted speaking times. Instead they were forced to ask questions due to lack of available information rather than providing substantive comments regarding the Headwaters planning process. USFWS did not even attempt to provide accurate consistent mapping of their Headwaters proposal proven by major changes during the meeting schedule.
The National Environmental Policy Act was seriously violated by these USFWS actions which discriminated against many locally concerned citizens who took the time to attend scoping meetings.
The bottom line result is that all of the meetings should be held over again after real information upon which to comment upon has been provided to the general public.
Everglades Headwaters RefugeUSFWS and their Partners tout that this Headwaters Refuge and Conservation Area are necessary in order to assist restoration of the water quality of the Everglades and assure the cattle ranching heritage survives and can be passed on to future generations. These two goals cannot be met simultaneously due to the fact that if the cattle remain in the Northern Everglades Headwaters region as they have been historically one of the main water quality problems caused by cattle waste will not be removed by spending the $700,000,000 dollars estimated to fund the 1st of 4 phases of land acquisition supposedly required. There will be many more millions required in addition to clean up the mess already caused by the cattle heritage proposed to be saved. This isn’t the fault of the cattle but the USFWS’s for not understanding the situation. Another problem to passing on the ranching heritage not solved by Headwaters is the inheritance taxes faced by ranchers. That is claimed by ranchers Nationwide as the main problem in securing ranching into the future and is not addressed by Headwaters land acquisition.
Endangered species are another reason for creating a refuge in order to provide corridors for movement and more range for species such as the Florida Panther. USFWS is a hypocrite to claim there even is a Florida Panther today since Florida reclassified many years ago that they are only protecting the Panther population in Florida after not being able to successfully prosecute a person who intentionally killed one due to the State’s inability to prove the sub-species (felis concolor coryi) existed. So as to further support this claim I will include an lengthy excerpt from the book titled “Swamp Screamer” authored by Charles Fergus describing how panther researchers discovered the Panther being studied in the 90’s in Florida had already been hybridized at that point in time and since then hasn’t legally qualified for ESA funding.
Beginning at paragraph 2 on page 118:
Roelke went to O’briens laboratory in Maryland and learned his arcane practices. She applied them to blood samples she had been hoarding from Florida panthers. She compared the genetic material to that of 8 other North American puma subspecies and 3 South American subspecies. (These were all the races from which biologists and veterinarians had secured tissue or blood samples.) The indicator on which she focused was a distinctive form of an enzyme called “adenosine phosphoribosyl transferase”, or APRT. Roelke and O’brien concluded that 7 panthers in Everglades National Park had descended, at least in part, from Central or South America. Also the South American genes had crossed the Shark River Slough (one wandering cat could have done it) and infiltrated the main cluster of panthers in Big Cypress ecosystem.
Roelke studied the archives of Everglades National Park and learned that a small private menagerie, Everglades Wonder Gardens of Bonita Springs, Florida, had turned loose at least 7 captive pumas between 1957 and 1965. Apparently park administrators had wanted to boost the panther’s population even back then, and no doubt they were under the impression that the imports were pure Florida panthers. Thirty years later, Everglades Wonder Gardens was still in business. Roelke went and checked on their cats. She zeroed in on an ancient female named Fatima. With the permission of Lester Piper, the menagerie’s owner, Roelke trimmed Fatima’s toenails. Also, she snuck a syringe of her blood: South American APRT.
On to page 119
“ No one wants to admit it.” Roelke said “but apparently a tame female from the East coast was brought into the menagerie in the fifties.” Maybe she came from Central America. Or from French Guiana, where the native puma had such a reddish cast to its coat that it is called tigre rouge. In any event, a cross-bred panther had made it into the wild. Five, six, seven generations later, the chromosomal contributions of at least one foreign cat could still be detected.
Which meant that Florida’s panthers were cross-bred. They were still overwhelmingly Felis Concolor coryi, but they were not purely so. In several scientific papers, Roelke and O’brien referred to the cross-bred cats as “heretical”, which was a polite of calling them hybrids. It seemed that the outside genes had given a boost to the panthers’ overall health. It was as if, say, several Haitian immigrants had been somehow accepted into an isolated Amish community in which, due to inbreeding, half the children were being born as dwarfs. After a few generations there would be darker- skinned Amish plowing the fields, fewer of whom would be three feet tall.
Yet if the panther was helped biologically by this influx of genes, it had been compromised politically. The Endangered Species Act bestows protection on the Florida Panther. It provides funding to aid in its restoration. It disallows the wholesale plundering of its habitat. It scares the hell out of corporations poised to turn thousand acre tracts of panther-friendly pine forest into orderly, profitable rows of orange and grapefruit trees.
The Endangered Species does not apply to hybrids.
End of page 119 of “Swamp Screamer” author Charles Fergus ph 1 814 692 5097
By the way I installed the bold type in this excerpt.
Nothing has changed to make the claim of protecting a “Florida Panther” any more valid today than back in the 90’s except the refusal of the USFWS to admit they are continuing the fraud to maintain their ability to wield power through the misappropriated funds they distribute to support the Florida Panther Preservation industry dependent upon said funds.
Pasted below is a comment made to a March 14, 2011 article about Florida Panthers from the National Park Traveler web site. More proof if one cares to look reality in the eye. Here is a direct link to the full article and all comments
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/03/florida-panther-next-extinction7746Comments
Submitted by MRC (not verified) on March 16, 2011 - 7:37am.
The news about the "eastern cougar" and the biological data is a big mess. I read the FWS press release as a confirmation that the eastern cougar did never exist at all, not now, not before. The headline thus seems to be missleading. The five year review of scientific data and reports of sightings concluded that there is no eastern subspiecies of the cougar. Given their limited terminology determined by legislation, the FWS has to call this result "extinction".
Biological studies seem to show that there are no subspiecies at all in North America, meaning not even the Florida Panther would be a subspecies but merely a population with a insular habitat:
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/91/3/186.abstractThis does not deminish the need for protection for the Florida population, but it confirmes that exact terminology is important.
• reply
USFWS and all of their so called partners are nothing more than a gang of co-conspirators engaged in a criminal enterprise by not shutting down this junk science based program.
My apologies for being blunt but the eternal tyranny caused by this sham requires plain English.
Hunting and access to hunting lands are of great concern to me and many others. Hunting in Central and South Florida includes unique vehicular systems (e.g. airboats, swamp buggies, ATV’s, mud boats, etc. etc.) to access remote hunting areas in difficult terrain. Without the acceptance by USFWS of these unique vehicular access systems that come in many forms being declared compatible within the proposed refuge any public access or hunting plan developed by USFWS or Fl Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is a farce and will not be supported in any way by the well informed public.
As far as any USFWS rumor that a State agency being given full control over the refuge and hunting goes – it cannot be believed due to USFWS document s that specify otherwise.
Hopefully Florida hunters will not fall prey to this State and Federally coordinated deception only to find out later that they have been lied to as usual concerning the devils in the details that will come out when it is too late to stop this terrible idea and concept.
My personal belief is that we have sufficient hunting lands in Florida without any Federal help to get more. If we need more hunt land at some point the State is quite able to acquire it when economically feasible. In view of current economic conditions it is not proper for Federal or State agencies to be suggesting any land acquisitions for any reasons such as the ones mentioned to justify the Headwaters bad idea.
USFWS expressed intent to recommend Wilderness in areas of this proposal is more proof of restrictions that will only allow foot access to any Refuge which is totally unacceptable in this region of Florida due to weather and terrain conditions. The Wilderness issue alone should justify scrapping the whole Headwaters project especially due to the crafty language USFWS used in their propaganda to camouflage their intent to recommend it in the future if this bad idea proceeds forward.
A few closing comments to the Refuge idea being proposed will follow and be put forth in as positive as manner as possible to suggest that USFWS choose the No Action Alternative now instead of later and facilitate a decision to forego development of a Land Protection Plan:
11 - POSITIVE RESULTS
OF CHOOSING
United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s
NO ACTION ALTERNATIVE
For
Everglades Headwaters Refuge and Conservation Area Proposal
Now Rather Than Later
1 Taxpayers will save the $700,000,000 (3/4 Billion dollar) down payment for this 1st phase of 4 phases of the unnecessary and unjustified USFWS vision called Everglades Headwaters Refuge and Conservation Area (EHRCA).
2 The U.S. Congress and voters will not be disenfranchised by USFWS’s decision to choose this particular process to avoid legislative debate as per USFWS’s Mr. Charlie Pelizza at the Everglades Coordinating Council meeting in Ft. Lauderdale Florida on February 3, 2011.
3 State sovereignty over hundreds of thousands of acres of Florida’s landscape will be maintained rather than relinquished to the Feds in order to facilitate USFWS’s and their Partners vision.
4 Private property owners will no longer be threatened by known future Federal actions that will devalue and make their properties less useful for the purposes they acquired them for.
5 Counties within this project will maintain their full tax base.
6 Job creation will be greatly enhanced by USFWS and their Partners losing the ability to use EHRCA as a tool to block and escalate costs of necessary highway construction or enhancements and green energy production (wind, solar etc.)
7 Florida’s elected officials Oaths of Office will be upheld.
8 USFWS’s will lose the ability to fulfill their promise of Wilderness review and recommendation included in convoluted language at pg 21, section XIV of their project proposal document.
9 Continuation of Customary and traditional uses of and means of accessing remote areas of the region by visitors and residents will be assured.
10 Maintaining local rural cultures will be assured by current economic conditions and cessation of speculative land purchases leading to over development.
11 Prevention/reduction in the ability of environmental organizations to litigate over Federal land management issues will be facilitated by currently private lands remaining in full private ownership. Federal ownership and jurisdiction opens the door widely for these opportunistic/predatory law suits.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment even though USFWS has chosen to fast track this proposal beyond the capacity of State agency’s ability to keep up (as per Fl Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission comments) much less the public.
Frank
