Sea Turtle Rescue Group Wants Lights Out

City says it'll launch $2 million light replacement program

More than 50 sea turtle rescue volunteers raucously demanded that the City of Fort Lauderdale follow its own beach lighting laws during sea turtle hatching season at a city commission meeting Tuesday night.

But city leaders countered with details of a $2 million lighting replacement plan to launch in September. 

Members of STOP, Sea Turtle Oversight Protection, say each night they rescue scores of sea turtle hatchlings scurrying not toward the ocean surf but toward city-owned street lights along A1A across from South Beach Park. The volunteers find just as many carcasses of the federally protected species.
 
STOP founder Richard Whitecloud reminded commissioners that when an individual citizen kills a sea turtle – even a tiny hatchling – it’s a federal offense, a felony.
 
But the city claims the street lights in question were approved by Florida Fish and Wildlife authorities, even though the very same street lights on the other side of A1A are turned off. Indeed, other city-owned lights just yards away from the controversial street lights are shielded by special sea turtle protectors.
 
Speaking before the commissioners, Whitecloud said his 125 volunteers, using methodical data collection, have documented more than 6,000 disoriented hatchlings within the City of Fort Lauderdale beach boundaries this season alone; 30,000 in Broward County with two months still to go. “This cannot stand anymore,” he said to a standing ovation.
 
“Do something to stop this massacre happening every night,” said volunteer Ana Campos, who also received loud applause.
 
The rescue group complained to the city last year about the very same set of street lights. The group then sent an email to city hall authorities July 15 and engaged in a back and forth on the issue. Then several say they met with City Manager Lee Feldman on July 26 outlining specific concerns.
 
Still, nothing was done. Then, over the weekend, the group says the carnage began under the very set of street lights.
 
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler and Commissioner Charlotte Rodstrom, whose district includes much of the beach, said the nearly $2 million street light replacement program will remove the street lights in question across from South Beach Park, and expand the light shielding program that has already retrofitted more than a hundred street lights, according to a city spokesperson.
 
“We take this very seriously,” said Spokesperson Chaz Adams. He and other city leaders have said the lights in question are hooded. But they are clearly not. “If lights are not shielded, it may be a safety issue,” he said.
 
Campos and others also want the city code enforcement officers to stop going easy on beach business, especially hotels, that violate the ordinance. For the eight years since the laws were enacted, the city has adopted an “education” strategy rather than levying fines.
 
Rescue volunteers who patrol the beach and chronicle the lighting violations said emphatically “education” has not worked nearly enough. Already this year, the city has opened 172 cases of businesses who do not know enough to meet the law.
 
The city’s new Assistant City Manager Susanne Torriente, the former Miami-Dade County Sustainability Coordinator who brings a national reputation for advancing green initiatives, said the city is working with businesses to become compliant but that it can be expensive for the businesses. The city almost never fines a violator.
 
Florida is arguably the most important sea turtle nesting habitat in the world. A sea turtle must reach about 20 years of age before it bears offspring. Only one in 10,000 hatchlings survive until maturity. When they do become pregnant, they return to nearly the very spot where they were hatched in order to dig a new nest and lay the next generation.
 
Eggs incubate for roughly 50 days before the hatchlings dig en masse up and out of the sand, and instinctively scurry toward the moonlight surf. But city lights trick them. Each mature sea turtle can drop 100 or more eggs and return every three years or so.
 
Sea turtles have survived 100 million years but in the last 30 years or so, their population has plummeted to a fraction of their historic levels. In an evolutionary time frame, that’s a blink of an eye.

For more information on STOP, click www.seaturtleop.org

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