Read Protect St. Pete Beach PAC’s online opinion feature at https://www.paradisenewsfl.com/opinion-protect-spb/.
Take a walk on the wild side by VOLUNTEERING, making a DONATION and letting your elected officials know your thoughts on SUSTAINABLE GROWTH and PROTECTING our environment.
Pinellas County’s beaches and marine life are a national treasure, winning awards and setting the bar high for conservation practices. But is it enough? Today Mother Nature has many challenges, with increasing development, traffic, and climate change and those who love Paradise will need to work together to protect our beaches and marine life.
Luckily for us, there are dozens of universities (USF St. Pete, Eckerd College), businesses, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, city and Pinellas County organizations working together as Eco Warriors. Battling by their side are local partners in Pinellas – Clearwater Marine Aquarium, Seabird Sanctuary, Coastal Wildlife Advocacy Group, Audubon Society, Water Warriors, Tampa Bay Estuary Program, Sea Turtle Conservancy, Keep Pinellas Beautiful and Tampa Bay Watch, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Educating the next generation to be stewards of the land is in full swing at Tampa Bay Watch’s Discovery Center on St. Pete Pier, which celebrated its three-year anniversary this summer and just added a mobile science unit for classes off-site. The St. Pete Science Festival and Marine Quest Feb. 10, 2024, the upcoming relaunched Science Center and Great Explorations also engage families to get involved.
All these organizations focus on different slices of the conservation pie. Their mission? To research, educate, protect, and rehabilitate where needed, using volunteers and raising funds to make a difference. These marine conservation first responders need your help, and Paradise NEWS wants to share some of their amazing stories in the hope you will get involved in protecting our future. Clean water and beaches, healthy coral and marine flora and the lives of sea turtles, manatees, birds, fish and other wildlife depend on us. This month, we look at four eco-warriors and issues to watch.
HELP KEEP PINELLAS BEAUTIFUL With a new location and mural on their building, Keep Pinellas Beautiful continues their mission started in 1992 to conserve and beautify the natural environment by community engagement and education, focusing on projects that prevent litter, reduce waste, conservation and beautification and community greening. Cleaning our public spaces, parks, neighborhoods, and shorelines is only part of the picture; we’re about people working with people for the betterment of our communities. Keep Pinellas Beautiful provides volunteer opportunities that develop individual responsibility and environmental stewardship, partnering with local governments, businesses, schools, nonprofits, and neighborhood organizations to turn public spaces into beautiful places.
MEET BeBot Donated to Keep Florida Beautiful by Surfing’s Evolution and Preservation Foundation, a charitable organization that maintains healthy Florida beaches, the BeBot serves as a teaching tool to work alongside cleanup volunteers. Thanks to Seagram’s Escapes investment in local beaches, the BeBot toured 14 beaches in Pinellas County July 2022, and this small golf cart-sized robot searching for tiny plastic marine and other debris will continue to be a game-changer. It does not require fuel; it runs on a mix of solar and battery power.
COASTAL WILDLIFE ADVOCACY GROUP At the start of this past sea turtle season, CWAG conducted lighting surveys on all the beachfront properties on St. Pete Beach and learned that no one was compliant with the city’s Marine Turtle Protection Ordinance. CEO Lisa Reich was saddened. “During the past 12 years, I have watched thousands of hatchlings lose their lives due to the problematic lighting on St. Pete Beach. As of mid-sea turtle season more than 50% of the nests that have hatched have disoriented. What that means is that the hatchlings go towards the problematic lighting instead of the light reflecting off the Gulf of Mexico and end up in pools, parking lots, storm drains, beachfront establishments, and some even cross Gulf Boulevard.”
The solution is simple. CWAG has made it their mission to educate the city, the residents, the resorts and tourists on sea turtle friendly guidelines. CWAG will also conduct a free lighting survey to any beachfront property to assist them with making the necessary lighting changes and modifications. In May, the organization worked with The Postcard Inn to discuss what lights needed to be changed, and they did everything CWAG recommended. As of July, they are in compliance. Learn more:
Sea Turtle Conservancy conserveturtles.org/stc-beachfront-lighting-program
FWC myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/wildlife/sea-turtle/lighting
BEACH RENOURISHMENT Walking the beaches after Idalia reveals how much of the beach has been lost, especially in Indian Rocks and Sunset Beach and the complete devastation of dunes in some areas. We need Pinellas County and the US Army Corps of Engineers to reach an agreement and approve beach renourishment as they have since 1966 when they first partnered. Recently, this Pinellas County Shore Protection Project has been indefinitely suspended due to policy changes in Washington, DC, as the federal government now requires securing perpetual easements from property owners to ensure that public access is available and maintained on renourished beaches.
In the past, we have satisfied these requirements by recognizing Florida’s historic tradition of public beach access and obtaining easements on private beach property landward of our state-determined “Erosion Control Line” that is the effective boundary of private ownership. Easements have historically been obtained where the sand is being placed on the private side of the Erosion Control Line, and where appropriate easements cannot be obtained, renourishment is simply skipped to avoid jeopardizing the entire coastline. Post-Idalia, Pinellas County and city governments have been informed that due to decisions made in Washington, the entire Pinellas County Shore Protection Project has now been halted.
