Florida: Pine Rocklands in Peril; An Interview with Matthew Schwartz

submitted by Sunshine State Anarchy / Earth First! Newswire

It seems as if South Florida won’t get a break from the never-ending stream of development eating away at what little remains of our wild habitat. In March, Judge Ungaro allowed Ram Realty to continue bulldozing endangered pine rockland habitat to clear space for a WalMart and some apartments. Last year, activists managed to file an emergency lawsuit to stop the construction, which Ungaro approved. Now, construction has resumed on the 137 acres next to the Miami Zoo, and if the forest floor has been plowed, restoration is impossible, as the unique ocean floor would be destroyed. The pine rocklands contain and support many endangered plants and animals, including Florida Atala butterfly, gopher tortoises, bonneted bats, tiger beetles, and even the Florida panther.

Less than two percent of pine rockland habitat remains, and that number sinks lower every year. Despite the habitat being endangered, the federal government allowed Ram Realty to create their own, non-peer-reviewed, methodology to determine how much damage the project would do. The lawsuit to stop the construction, filed by the Wildlands Association, the Tropical Audubon Society, and the Miami Pine Rockland Coalition, is still open, but despite that, the judge removed the temporary restraining order, allowing the construction to continue. The surveys the company did were woefully inaccurate and sloppy, with no survey being done for tiger beetles, and only one part of the forest being checked for bonneted bats. The emergency lawsuit and temporary restraining order were the last line of defense for this endangered habitat, with it gone and the construction set to start at any moment, it is up to us to stop further damage from being done. For more information, visit the South Florida Wildlands Association Facebook page.

On April 19, Sunshine State Anarchy conducted a phone interview with Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association—a small organization that does habitat protection in the greater Everglades area.

Sunshine State Anarchy: Do you know whether the ground has been plowed and or not whether it can be restored?

Matthew Schwartz: From what I’ve seen, no. This is just my observations from looking at [the site] from the various streets that are adjacent to the area, it seems like they’ve cut down the trees and now I know they’re clearing those trees that were cut down. They’re in the process of doing that now, but they haven’t been actually excavating.

SSA: So there still is a possibility, if they were to say, ‘no, you can’t develop here’, and the land were to go to the state or the county, it could be restored, theoretically?

MS: Yeah, in that very long shot possibility that it becomes public land or that the developer starts to put a conservation easement on it so that it could be restored to pine rockland, and that’s a real long shot, yeah, I believe from what experts have said about that property that it could be restored. The property next door, where the Miami Wilds Project might be going, that’s the Coast Guard property that’s east of this property, that was cleared a long time ago, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has said that property could also be brought back. So, they cleared it some time ago already, so grass and vegetation is already starting to come back, bringing back the pine rocklands and bringing back Miami-Dade slash pine and the saw palmetto that were there a long time ago, that would be a much more rigorous undertaking.

SSA: Regarding the case, I believe you and three others filed a lawsuit, can you give me any details on that?

MS: Well, it’s in front of the judge. The judge is going to make a decision. I mean, the judge has already lifted the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that was on the developer that halted construction after we requested that construction be halted, but she lifted that. I forget the timeline, but the developer has not moved in to start construction yet. Apparently, he’s waiting for the case to be wrapped up by the court. But, by lifting the TRO she was signaling that she felt what was done was legal. It’s not a question, so none of this what we’re talking about has anything to do with right or wrong, whether it was ecologically preferred or not. Courts decide whether something is legal or not, and she has determined that what she saw from up to that point looked like everything that was done was legal. That he bought the property legally, that the Fish and Wildlife Service made the determination that he could go ahead with it. But we’re still hoping that when all the material from the case is reviewed by the judge, that she’ll see that the Fish and Wildlife Service did not do a very good job in issuing the permit. Remember, the Fish and Wildlife Service is the defendant here. We’re not suing RAM, we’re not suing the realtor. We’re suing the Fish and Wildlife Service for their issuance of a habitat conservation plan for the project.

SSA: So, the University of Miami (UM) did once own the land, correct?

MS: UM owned the land, and before UM the Department of Defense owned the land.

SSA: Okay, have they made any statements regarding the construction of the land?

MS: Oh, I’ve seen statements that they’ve felt that what was done was legal. When they first made the sale, they were kinda crowing about what a good deal it was, because here they had some land that they weren’t doing anything with and by selling it off, they were able to bring in some money. So, they’re initial response to this whole project was “Great, we had some land we weren’t doing anything with and now it’s been sold and we have money to do other things with.” So that’s the only statements I’ve seen from them. They’re asserting that it was legal and they’re asserting that they made a good business deal, but they’re not apologizing for the destruction of pine rockland. They’re not gonna do that, they’re just sort of ignoring the fact that this property is as ecologically valuable as it is. They’re just sort of putting that off and not addressing that issue. Because what could they do? I mean, they’ve done it, they know what happened, they realized that this was a very rare, valuable piece of land, a habitat for many types of endangered species, and they made a deal. So, you know, they shouldn’t have done it! They should’ve done the right thing and made a relationship.

The county had approached them some years ago, Miami-Dade county has a program called the Environmentally Endangered Lands program, that’s called EEL, and EEL had approached them and said, “Hey, why don’t you let us maintain, manage, restore these lands as pine rocklands?”, just as they have in other pine rocklands next to this one. So, let me give you a picture of what’s happened there, because it’s not just this property. So, the entire is much bigger, the property originally, well it goes from basically the railroad tracks on the west side over to the east side of the Coast Guard station. From the north it goes from Southwest 152nd street to Eureka Drive, and within that gigantic rectangle there’s all kinds of properties. There’s the Coast Guard station, there’s an Army Base, there’s a Department of Defense prison, there’s the UM property, there’s RAM’s property, there’s Zoo Miami, there’s Larry and Penny Thompson Park, so there’s a whole mosaic of properties with different ownership, and all of it is the Richmond pine rocklands, and all of it was owned by the Department of Defense. It was the Richmond Naval Air Base during World War II, they actually launched blimps from that base to protect the Atlantic Ocean and the shipping along Florida from German U-Boats. That’s why that was not developed, because if you look around it on the map, you’ll see everything else around there is developed. It’s paved over, with subdivisions and shopping malls, and everything, just the normal Miami-Dade development and that particular block of land didn’t get developed because it was Department of Defense. And then they gave it out to different entities, the county got some, the Coast Guard got some, UM got some, and that’s why Zoo Miami is there. That’s why the Larry and Penny Thompson Park is there. But the county has done really good on the parts of the Richmond pine rocklands that they own, and they’ve really done a beautiful job of restoration. If you ever go down there, you’ll see, if you go to Larry and Penny Thompson Park, and it’s beautiful pine rocklands. That’s the southern end of the Richmond pine rocklands, and you’ll see just beautiful pinelands, you’ll see the limestone sticking up from the ground, and the saw palmetto and birds and butterflies and all kinds of critters in there, and there’s bike trails and walking trails, and that’s what we hoped the northern part, which UM owned, was gonna become one day. It didn’t happen, because UM got rid of it and we didn’t know about it until they wrote about it in the Miami Herald! And then I went back and I saw the South Florida Business Journal article where they were saying “Yay! We sold the land, we got a bunch of money!”, which really pissed me off, actually.

SSA: You are taking legal action, but have you considered taking any direction action, physically stopping the construction from happening?

MS: Well, a couple years ago I organized a rally for the rocklands at the site. We met at the Zoo in Miami and marched out onto Southwest 152nd Street. I can only speak for myself, I can’t speak for any other groups, I am not considering any kind of direct action. I’m not considering direct action, there’s a lot of reasons for that, but that’s not in the cards for my organization.

SSA: Where can people go to get involved or get updates on what’s happening?

MS: Well, I post regularly on the South Florida Wildlands [Facebook] page, and the other groups also have websites and things they do. The wildlands page, it’s a popular page, people go there, and I can tell you that some of the posts that I’ve done there on the rocklands have been some of the posts that have generated the most interest.

MS: It’s very frustrating, because I know people want to do something, and trying to come up with something that would make a difference, we tried, I mean I tried to have meetings with UM to convince them to give this up, I tried to convince RAM to give this up. It was a business deal and they signed a contract and I tried very hard in my conversations with them to get them to realize what they were doing and back out. I tried to get the Fish and Wildlife service, long before they signed the agreement, I had many meetings with them, pleading with them to put the brakes on this project and say, “Look, the habitat that these endangered species need is too small already and now you’re cutting it up even more, you shouldn’t be writing a permit for this.” So, I spent a lot of energy with both RAM, UM, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service trying to get one or all of them to pull the plug on this, and I made good arguments. They didn’t listen.

SSA: What other information would you like people to know about?

MS: Well I think what people need to do, mostly, cause these are decisions, the permitting decisions are made ultimately by elected officials, in this case Miami-Dade county had to give the okay for this, and I would say that people need to get involved in these kinds of issues all the time, and when they have an opportunity during election years to meet and talk with politicians, they need to ask questions about this. I mean the politicians are really out of the loop on this completely. They love to talk about the special prosecutor and foreign policy and education and taxes and healthcare, but the environment is almost never discussed. I mean, watch the nightly news! I mean, now and then, if we did a protest in front of the site, it would be covered. And maybe that’s a good reason to do protests is to get coverage for issues and bring it to people’s attention, but people really need to stay on top of these issues and even just ask questions, when they have a chance to talk to politicians, say “Hey, Florida’s habitat is shrinking by the day for wildlife everywhere.” This is not isolated, this is kind of getting a lot of attention, but I work in projects throughout South Florida, this is happening everywhere. And now people love to talk about climate change. Years ago, when people used to talk about the environment, it was air pollution and litter and water pollution. People used to be all about litter. I remember the first time I told someone that I was working with environmental issues, “So you don’t like people littering?” and we don’t talk that much about people littering anymore. Now we talk about climate change more than anything else. When it comes to the environment, environment and climate change are the two things that go hand in hand. But I will tell you that Florida’s wildlife will be lucky to reach the point where climate change impact is really going to be affecting them. They’re not gonna live that long, they’re not gonna make it to climate change. They’re dying just from mostly losing habitat, secondly, it’s degradation of habitat from pollution and run off.

I mean, think about this site: I think they’re developing 80 acres approximately and protecting 50 acres on the site and 50 acres off the site. But those 50 acres that they’re gonna protect are gonna be surrounded by parking lots, lighting, a Wal-Mart, runoff when it rains. Everything is going to be impacting the preserved areas. People have this idea that, “Oh, we’re going to develop these hundred acres, but we’re gonna protect these hundred acres.” But that hundred acres that they’re protecting is no longer as valuable as it was, cause now it’s got this major subdivision next to it. People need to know, that from my point of view, development in undeveloped habitat in Florida should be stopped, period. It should absolutely be stopped if we want to have wildlife in Florida, if we want to have fish, if we want to have coastal ecosystems too, because everything we do here runs off into the coastal ecosystems. Everything. Every time you touch your brake you’re peeling off a little bit of metal off that brake shoe, and that metal is falling onto the roadway, and that metal on the roadway is washed down through the storm drains when it rains. So everything, everything from buildings to lawns gets washed out onto the coast. If people wanna get involved, they need to directly go to politicians and make habitat protection an issue. Ask them about this [the rocklands], ask them about panthers, ask them about manatees, and ask them about every single wildlife species and let them know that these issues are important, because that’s not happening. When people are polled on environmental issues, or not environmental issues, they ask voters every time there’s a presidential election, “What’s important to you?”, almost nobody mentions the environment. Or if they do, they mention climate change. But they really need to think about what kind of state, what kind of area they want to live in.