MIAMI – The vision of a public-private partnership to build a water park that will attract more tourists to Zoo Miami started before Luca Martinez was born. It started before wildlife influencers were even a thing.
Martinez, who has 1.2 million followers on TikTok and 251,000 on Instagram, is an 18-year-old wildlife photographer who has been interested in conflicts between conservation and economic growth.
The Florida International University student said the county-owned land — which has been part of a process that started about three decades ago — needs to be protected.
“I care about this project because it’s my backyard,” Martinez said about why he decided to release a short video ahead of a commission vote on a lease agreement Tuesday.
Martinez joins the efforts of conservationists who are worried about the endangered bonneted bat, the only one in North America that uses an echo-location frequency when hunting that humans can hear. They want development to stay away from the Pine Rocklands, a habitat unique to South Florida and the Bahamas.
The bonneted bat wasn’t an endangered species and Zoo Miami didn’t have a Pine Rocklands restoration program when Dennis Moss, a then newly elected commissioner, was looking for ways to revitalize the area’s economy after Hurricane Andrew’s devastation in 1992.
The bat also wasn’t a federally-recognized endangered species when Moss proposed the water park in 1997, and when Miami-Dade voters approved a referendum in 2006. Commissioners approved land-use changes in 2008, and Paul Lambert, who heads the development, registered Miami Wilds LLC in 2013.
As the environmental concerns grew, conservationists, including Ron Magill, have continued to speak against the project and some have even taken the issue to court. There were also concerns about the threatened Key ringneck snake and the tiny Miami tiger beetle.
Magill, who works for Zoo Miami, has said he started speaking against the project as a conservationist who supports the new science and research in the area.
“We did not know back then what we know now. I voted for the water park back in 2006,” Magill said.
The developer’s marketers described the project as “eco-sensitive” and specified that the assigned 27.5 acres of Miami-Dade County-owned land are “outside of environmentally protected areas.”
Magill and Martinez said they are not convinced.
“Now the developers have been saying, ‘Oh! We are just building on the parking lot!’ It’s not just the parking lot; it’s not just pavement,” Magill said adding that it is a hunting ground for the bats.
Lambert said the surveys and the information he has received support his vision for the project in proximity to the beloved wild animals.
“Both can co-exist here, without diminishing on the one hand, anything to do with the habitat,” Lambert said in response to the conservationists’ concerns.
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