Speech delivered on February 16, 1999 to Brevard County Board of County Commissioners.

Topic: Proposing that existing land use regulations be amended to include a requirement that any proposed development be subjected to an assessment of how it will affect wildlife corridors.

Speech delivered by Loren Kaufman
Written by Tim Mallow and Loren Kaufman

Good Evening, my name is Loren Kaufman of Coryi Foundation, Inc. - 3715 Felda St. Cocoa. We research bobcat viability east of the St. Johns River. We do this, in part, by radio-collaring bobcats to study their movements through corridors.

There was a time when the county’s only wildlife concerns involved imperiled species such as the scrub jay, beach mouse, and indigo snake, to name a few. However, the bobcat can now be added to this list because habitat reduction has now reached the scale of its needs. The following facts foreshadow their potential local extinction:

50% of the county’s land is already developed. Another 25% consist of habitats that are unsuitable for bobcats. Most of these are the treeless wetlands associated with the St. Johns River floodplain. The remaining 25% constitute about 100,000 acres. These areas consist of upland and wetland forests. Unfortunately, the uplands are quickly disappearing due to their attractiveness for development. Eventually, the floodplain habitats will comprise the only remaining undeveloped area of appreciable size. However, because of the floodplain’s unsuitability for bobcats, it is doubtful that they will be able to rely on it for their long-term persistence.

Another course of local extinction that is equally probable is as follows: Development will reach 100% saturation from the Indian River Lagoon to the St. Johns River floodplain at places like Lake Washington and Mims. If this happens, the remnant population of bobcats contained within will be small and isolated. Knowing that each male aggressively defends a 5000 acre territory exclusively for himself and 1-2 females, and that a population requires 200 individuals to insure a long term persistence that is free of the extinction yielding effects of inbreeding and epidemics, a self-sustaining population would then require around 291,000 acres. This is far more than available between Melbourne and Mims. At most, the central part of the county could only hold about 100 animals, if none of it were developed. Existing developments reduce this figure radically. Within this small and isolated population, the rates of inbreeding would increase. Such would induce a host of genetically linked biomedical problems that include a reduction in reproductive success, a drop in immunity to diseases, and fatal physiologic side effects. With no replenishment of individuals or genes from outside sources, the remnant will eventually go extinct.

Right now, individuals and genes can flow through the county via wildlife corridors, thereby arresting extinction processes at the moment. However, there presently exist no legal measures for the protection of corridors. Nor have large-scale land conservation needs ever been made a priority on Brevard County’s environmental agendas.

This is probably because our thinking is predisposed to an existing set of misconceptions that fail to meet conservation needs at the large-scale level. First, we erroneously think in terms of smallness. We often think that as long as Enchanted Forest type of sanctuaries exist, then there will be places for wildlife to live. This is true for species such as insects, rodents and herpetofauna that can make use of a mere few hundred acres. However, these parcels are too small for the wider ranging species like the bobcat. Second, we erroneously think that mitigation of environmentally sensitive lands is going to compensate for the loss due to development. This may sound great, but mitigations still amount to habitat loss. Third, we falsely think that just because a parcel is not a wetland that it’s okay to develop it. Such a view does not afford protection for species that depend heavily on uplands. Fourth, we also think that we don’t have to worry about the species that are not endangered or threatened. As a result, an unlisted species is rarely given any consideration in local conservation issues. The bobcat is a case in point. Fifth, it must be added that committees that decide on the fate of natural areas are often steered by a group that is either uninformed about conservation issues or that do not have an ecologist on-board to balance growth trends with conservation needs. As a result, decisions are invariably made to destroy habitats, with such destruction further weakening the landscape’s ability to promote gene flow.

Finally, inherent to all these misconceptions is the unfortunate fact that no thought is ever given to landscape connectivity and the protection of large contiguous portions of land. That is, the landscape as a whole is not taken into account. As a result, the landscape is eaten away in piecemeal fashion. The resulting landscape resembles a checkerboard where remaining natural areas are too small and isolated to allow the persistence of many species.

Because of these shortcomings, we are already documenting precursors to bobcat extinction from most of the county. These include a high rate of road deaths experienced by juvenile males - 42% compared with juvenile females, adult males and adult females at 9, 25 and 25%, respectively. This is easily attributed to a limitation of natural space that clusters young males in an equally constrictive landscape that is saturated with highways. In other words, they are finding it difficult to disperse from their birth territories as they roam in search of vacant space in which to establish adult territories. As a result, their genes go to the grave, rather than contributing to genetic diversity.

The point is that there exist no ordinances that address what the wide-ranging species require - connectivity on a large scale. This scale is on the order of the size of the county. It must be added that many other species, though less distant in their day to day movements, also stand to disappear without such connectivity.

Therefore, we propose that an amendment be made to the existing land development regulations that subjects all proposed development to a process that requires an assessment of how the development will effect the movements and persistence of animals on a large scale. That is, how such development could destroy vital corridors or weaken the demographic stability of known subpopulation cores. This process must utilize credible ecological and environmental professionals who are knowledgeable of these larger-scale issues.

Thank You