March 2004

Final Report of the Wekiva River Basin Coordinating Committee

By Pat Harden
FOWR Board

The future of the spring-fed Wekiva has been the subject of intense debate for nearly two years. The Wekiva River Basin Coordinating Committee (WRBCC), appointed by the Governor, has approved recommendations intended to better protect the unique Wekiva springshed and its habitats, while addressing regional transportation needs. These efforts follow an embattled 2003 legislative session which resulted in the recommendations from an earlier Wekiva Basin Area Task Force (WBATF) meeting defeat in the House of Representatives.  The complaint against the WRBATF, was that it did not have enough representation from smaller local governments, citizens and landowners in the area.  As a result, the WRBCC consisted of 27 members including elected officials of several cities, including smaller city governments such as Mt. Dora and Eustis, several citizens, large landowners, state agencies, county commissioners, the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority two environmental organizations (FOWR and Florida Audubon). 


Chaired by State Senator Lee Constantine, the WRBCC has, by consensus, made seventeen recommendations plus two “implementation” recommendations, to be implemented mostly through agency rule-making and revision to local government comprehensive plans within a defined Wekiva Study Area.  The recommendations offer the best hope for legislation leading to protection of the springs within the basin and associated ecosystems.  They also provide for economic growth. 
 
Included among the committee recommendations are a set of design principles for a limited-access “Wekiva Parkway”, bridging wildlife corridors and recommending purchase of over nine-thousand acres of environmentally sensitive lands for preservation along its alignment. There are also directives to the Department of Environmental Protection and the St Johns River Water Management District to develop regulations affecting water quality and quantity, and to local governments to enhance land use policies for the protection of open space.

Senator Constantine deserves a standing ovation for leading the WRBCC from a tenuous beginning to an outcome of consensus; the only negative vote was that of Orange County Commissioner Bob Sindler. It is now up to the Legislature, especially those representing Orange, Lake and Seminole Counties, to respond with meaningful legislation.  This must be followed by a sincere commitment by local governments within the springshed and the support of appropriate state agencies in order to ensure a lasting future for the natural resources of the Wekiva River.
 
The final report and the materials that were presented to the WRBCC can be found at www.wekivacommittee.org.  They are large files and take time to download.

 

Wekiva River 'Challenge' at Leu Gardens Examines Report

Recommendations by the Governor's Wekiva River Basin Coordinating Committee(WRBCC) were analyazed at the informative panel presentation at Leu Gardens on March 12, 2004. The 'Wekiva River Basin Challenge', hosted by conservation lands attorney Clay Henderson, was sponsored by Rollins, UCF, and the Healthy Community Initiative.

The roundtable featured Jim Murley, Charles Pattison, Dr. Marty Wanielista, Charles Lee and Walt Thompson. Sen. Lee Constantine, former Wekiva Coordinating Committee chairman, shared his views on the basin's future and upcoming Legislative Session. Bruce Stephenson of Rollins College’s Environmental Studies Program helped organize the event, along with Linda Chapin of UCF and Sydney Green of the HCI.

Notable were comments from Dr. Wanielista that predicted, if present trends continue and no changes are made, the springs feeding the Wekiva will lose 1/60th of their flow every three years. By that math, in 180 years the springs will be bone dry. Charles Lee declared that the single most important action homeowners can take to put less pressure on the Floridan Aquifer is to reduce landscape irrigation. Dr. Wanielista said the pressure on the aquatic environment in Florida creates a demand for those corporations and businesses who can specialize in facilitating an economy that is environmentally sustainable. All strongly recommended closely watching the development and progress of bills in the Florida Legislature and to contact lawmakers when necessary.

Sen. Constantine has introduced a bill in the Senate, while Rep. Fred Brummer (R-Apopka) has introduced one in the House. Brummer, a notorious critic of both Governor’s task forces on the river, has already included language in his bill that is contrary to the bipartisan recommendations of the most recent Wekiva committee.

 

The Crying Bird
Aramus Guarauno

By Steve Phelan
FOWR Vice President

According to naturalist Francis Harper, William Bartram was the first to describe the Florida limpkin, one of the signature birds of our Wekiva basin. Almost all my memories of the river are filled with the raucous cry, kurr-ee-oww, of the brown bespeckled wader with the long arcing bill. According to Bartram, the Seminole natives of the eighteenth century called the bird Ephouskyca, perhaps echoing the alarming sound in the last two syllables. I have often wondered why their call seems to be the loudest by far in the swamp. Are they trying to tell us something’s wrong.

As Bartram mentions, you can expect to hear this call whenever you startle the bird up into flight, but often i find, when i paddle by, that the limpkin will not at all bother to leave off his trolling for food among the spadderdock and water lettuce to object to my presence. Sometimes the call comes from way back in the floodplain forest, perhaps some back channel, and seems to indicate a broad territory to be announced or secured.

In a 1992 survey of limpkins in the nine miles of Rock Springs Run and the sixteen of the Wekiva, a total of 88 birds were tallied: 14 observed pairs, 29 single adults, and just 2 juveniles. That was on [two successive weekly trips in late February when males might be expected to come calling. Jennifer McMurtray, Rosi Mulholland, and Deborah Shelley did the study by broadcasting the call of the unpaired male up and down the river, using a tape-recorder! This technique was not always successful, but they were able to map out 43 territories, a representation of a healthy population.

The map of those territories has two major gaps, the middle third of Rock Springs Run and the Lower Wekiva Preserve. However, there was a relatively even distribution along the rest of the river. Just last year Bill and i saw a pair with two chicks in the Lower Preserve, so the gaps are probably just an accident of timing. According to the report, limpkins prefer the newly emergent vegetation and the broader sections of the stream, claiming four or five acres for their territory.

You can view the Christmas Bird Count figures for the limpkin or any other species in Florida by logging on to the Audubon web site (http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc/index.html). You will find that the number of limpkins spotted in Florida has been fairly steady, but if you make a graph of the spottings per person-hour, there seems to be a 30% decline over the past ten years. The Wekiva River is listed there as a Florida region because many of our members have been participating for years in the count.

Declines in limpkin populations have been linked in Florida’s spring-fed waters to the increase in nitrates that has had serious effects on the snails and other crustaceans the limpkin loves to scoop with that long curvy bill. In the Wakulla river up near Tallahassee, for example, where nitrates have risen dangerously high, rangers are watching carefully to see how the snails and limpkins are faring. Of course, once they’re gone, you won’t hear them crying about it.

Wekiva River’s 104th Christmas Bird Count

by Fred Harden & Kathy Hale
FOWR Board

The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) started with 26 birders (conservationists) on Christmas Day of 1900 as way of promoting conservation by counting rather than hunting birds and maybe even interfere with some duck hunting. On this first count, the birders observed 90 species and a total of 18,500 individual birds. So was launched the first CBC. The CBC has become increasingly accepted by ornithologist and conservationists alike as the best, if not only, tool available for assessing the long-term trends in the early winter bird populations of North America.

The Wekiva River CBC (FLWR) began on December 25, 1991 with 39 birders who observed 115 species and 10,337 individual birds. For the highest count year of the Wekiva River (2001/2002), birders observed 129 species and 27,174 individual birds. During the 104th CBC (2003/2004) for the Wekiva River, 49 birders were in the field for one full day during the count day, December 14, 2003. A total of 110 species and 17,060 individual birds were counted, not bad for a day of heavy rain with a low temp of 50 F and a high temperature of 62 F – a pretty tough, dedicated team. We covered 15 zones within a circle of 15 miles in diameter. The area included Sanford, parts of Lake Jesup and Lake Monroe, the Little Wekiva River, the Wekiva River from SR 46 to the St. Johns River, the Lower Wekiva Preserve, Rock Springs Reserve, Seminole State Forest, and parts of the Wekiva State Forest. The southern boundary was SR 424. This was our 13th year to participate in the Christmas Bird Count. Over this time period, our teams have observed 182 species and a grand total of 242,634 individual birds.

The cumulative historic CBC date is now available on-line. For more information, go to the Audubon’s web site for the CBC http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc/hr/index.html. The Wekiva River CBC Count Code is FLWR.
 

The Great Land Gobble

By Steve Phelan
FOWR Vice President

Want the good news or the better? Well, we got the good news about the Wekiva wildlife corridors. The Florida Bureau of Land Acquisition never rests when it comes to the Wekiva Basin. Deborah Poppel, standing in for Eva Armstrong, gave us the bright picture of all the parcels that the Florida Forever program is working to purchase or protect.

The State over the past four decades has acquired 61,500 acres in the Wekiva Basin at an expenditure of better than $138,000,000. That represents 55% of the basin. This is tax money well spent to provide a healthy river for all of us plants, animals, and humans.

Those figures do not include the holdings of the Water Management District. The District right now is taking the lead in seeking the four primary large parcels left in Orange and Lake Counties: Seminole Woods, Pine Plantation, Neighborhood Lakes, and New Garden Coal. That’s the better news we all await that is connected to the Western Beltway initiative.

Ms. Poppel described the process and the strategy they follow to get the best price they can for a parcel or for its development rights. After twenty-five years in real estate, she now devotes her time to negotiate fair deals for preservation. Jim Brooks, one of her key agents in the Wekiva, used a powerpoint presentation to indicate the dozens of parcels they are working on in our neck of the river.

The Bureau of Land Acquisition is keenly interested in the Wekiva parcels that would build the western wildlife connector to the Ocala National Forest. They are also eager to protect the best examples of habitats that our record growth in the northwest will deplete. Clearly the news on the Western Beltway is driving up the asking prices, but many owners have a desire to leave a legacy in the basin.

One important element of the Bureau’s careful work (it normally takes as much as five years to actually land some of the bigger fish) is to seek boundary amendments, that is, to extend the holdings of the state beyond the existing boundary so as to include some of the recharge areas to the west of already protected wetlands. The black bears and the bobcats in the audience were happy. I reckon there were about a hundred of them.

Wekiva History: From the Sacred to the Profane ?

by Ginny Maxwell
Currents Copy Editor

     As our planet spins towards the vernal equinox, lavender irises bloom on the shores of the Wekiva, and sunburned college students boisterously man canoes that skim its surface. But just weeks ago, when a winter chill held the world in stasis and gaps in the woody growth revealed patches of brown, the river seemed ancient, timeless. On that February day a solitary eagle, lifted by a vortex of air, sent my thoughts back to a time when the Timucuan Indians wore paths from shore to camp and buried their dead in sacred middens.
It was here, in these woods, that they sharpened their arrows for the hunt, performed rituals to ensure success, and enjoyed deer meat roasted over a camp fire. The women brewed tea that was served ceremoniously at the chief's council meetings. Here, on this shore, Timucuan children tried to capture fish and learn the ways of the animals that would become their food. For them, the Wekiva was not segregated from the mainstream of their lives; it was the sustainer of life, the nourisher of their souls. Water, which they called ibi, pouring in abundance through fissures from the heart of the earth and blessing the ground as rain, was esteemed and protected.
     As caretakers of the earth, the Timucuans lived within the balance of nature's boundaries, taking no more than what could be replenished. They knew that exhausting the earth's resources would be detrimental not only to the tribe but to every creature. Their ethic did not have to be legislated; it was heart knowledge, their world view. Timucuan children drank the same ibi that sustained their fathers and grandfathers and would sustain generations to come. As long as this ethic was not lost, they knew they had a chance to preserve the future. They could not have known that disease brought by the Europeans would claim their way of life forever.
     Time has passed and man has forgotten: the common is no longer sacred. Official agencies must be assigned the duty of protecting our resources while Mother Earth reels in disbelief. For a people who were given life by the Wekiva, their spirit and message remain for those of us who are willing to hear: To understand the sacredness of water is to have respect for life itself.


A Warm River Welcome to Our New Members

Mr. & Mrs. Russell Denslow
Clark Gwinn
Sarah McClendon
Dale Bennett
Jo Ann & Stuart Farb
Tamera & Fletcher Peacock

LIFETIME MEMBERS:

Loretta & James DiSalvatore
E. Ann McGee
Barbara & Bob Mead
Dr. Rosa A. Raska

THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH

'In the dust where we have
buried the silent races, we
have buried so much of the
delicate magic of life.'
- DH Lawrence