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FeedBIG CYPRESS SUPERINTENDENT TAKES A WRONG TURN
By Ted Williams
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
July 27, 2007
In September 2000 National Park Service (NPS) Director Robert Stanton signed the Off Road Vehicle (ORV) Plan for Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. The key provision of the Plan designates up to 400 miles of primary and secondary ORV routes. The Plan promised to end "dispersed use," i.e. allowing ORVs to go virtually anywhere in the Preserve, a practice that has left over 20,000 miles of visible tracks on the ground. Motorized recreation groups sued to stop the Plan. The ORV groups lost in a February 2005 federal court decision. But the new park superintendent, Ms. Karen Gustin is now relinquishing on the ground what the NPS won in court.
The ORV Plan allows for what is called "adaptive management," i.e. the NPS may alter the terms of the Plan as additional scientific information becomes available from research studies. When Director Stanton signed the Record of Decision (ROD) for the ORV Plan in September 2000, the ROD stated that the NPS will respond to an expanding knowledge base, developed through scientific research, "with adaptive management actions that assure the highest protection of the preserve’s resources." At the heart of the ORV Plan is the premise that NPS ORV management must first assure the protection of resources.
On June 14, 2007, the nation’s leading conservation groups filed a notice of intent to sue the NPS for the failures of park superintendent Gustin to assure the protection of park resources. Instead, Ms. Gustin has brought the ORV Plan to a halt. Under Ms. Gustin’s management, the NPS failed to implement key provisions of the ORV Plan. Dispersed use continues in large areas of the Preserve, creating a rutted moonscape of tens of thousands of acres. Worse than the failure to carry out key provisions of the Plan, in April 2007, Gustin opened 45 miles of new primary and secondary ORV routes in the Bear Island region of the Preserve. The only scientific basis for Gustin’s style of "adaptative management" were requests by the ORV user groups.
PEER is a party to the notice of intent to sue. PEER gladly joined the NPCA, The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife, among others, who have done so much work protecting Big Cypress from ORVs.
Posted at 07:54 AM | Permalink
