MIAMI – Biscayne Bay activists rejoiced after the city of Miami unanimously passed a resolution that was supposed to protect the marine birds of Mangrove Island last week.
But that excitement quickly faded, after it was realized that the resolution was stripped of important language surrounding boating restrictions.
What was passed was completely different,” Friends of Biscayne Bay Vice President Laura Reynolds said. “It [the resolution] did not establish any restrictions to boating whatsoever. Exactly what the birds needed, they took out of the item.”
Even the sponsor of the resolution, District 2 City Commissioner Sabina Covo, was caught off-guard. She expressed disappointment in the last-minute change, telling Local 10, “I felt deceived.”
For months, environmentalists have been pushing to protect this critical habitat.
Morningside resident and activist Sandy Moise has been one of those voices.
“I’ve noticed a lot of speeding jet skis spinning around,” she said. “They’re actually coming into the bay.”
The motorized activity, combined with carelessly discarded fishing gear, has already taken a deadly toll on the birds. Local 10 News crews saw it for themselves, counting two dead birds at the site.
“(The birds) are raising their young here. If you have jet skis and people fishing in the area, you’re going to be disrupting them,” explained Senior Conservation Director for the Tropical Audubon Society Lauren Jonaitis.
The concerns are what prompted Covo to take up the issue. She reached out to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to confirm that the marine birds were in fact treating Mangrove Island as a rookery.
An FWC spokesperson confirmed the findings, sharing the following statement:
“FWC staff were made aware of potential nesting activity at the site referred to as Mangrove Island earlier this year. Staff conducted a site visit and confirmed there were active nests of several species (no state or federally listed species). Staff posted the area with the Sensitive Area signs (typically used for posting wading bird rookeries) to alert the public of nesting activity. This is the first year that we have documented nesting at this location, but it is possible that nesting has occurred in previous years.”
Those “Sensitive Area” signs were part of the first successful resolution that Covo sponsored back in July.
Months later, Covo went back to the commission with a new resolution to prohibit all motorized boating within 500 feet of the island, per FWC guidelines. The proposition also called for the establishment of an idle speed zone east of the rookery, an area that is already manatee protected. But not everyone was on board.
“We’re not in favor of that kind of thing,” Miami-Dade County commissioner for the Florida Inland Navigation District Spencer Crowley told Local 10 when asked about the restrictions.
The district — known as FIND — is a special state taxing district that’s charged with managing and maintaining the Intracoastal Waterway from Nassau County down to Miami-Dade. That means FIND is funded by the taxpayers of Florida. As a matter of fact, we pay 3.2 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value. The organization also provides local governments with grants to help improve coastal properties like Morningside Park, directly across from Mangrove Island.
In an email obtained by Local 10 News, Crowley told commissioners that if they voted for the proposed resolution, FIND would reconsider a $4.3 million grant for Morningside Park improvements.
“If that’s the kind of thing that the city or different groups want to do in Biscayne Bay, that’s fine. They can do it on their own, they’re certainly not going to have our support through our grant funding,” Crowley says.
Environmental advocates like Moise believe that the restrictions are crucial and that FIND is overreaching in their view.
“In reality, the boating restriction did not in any way whatsoever impede access to Morningside Park,” she said. “It did not impede access to the channel, it did not block the channel. So it really does not impact what their mission as an organization is.”
Covo said she had worked with the city attorney ahead of time to add an amendment that the city would collaborate with FIND to help protect the rookery, but Crowley is adamant that any restrictions on boating are off-limits, and that instead the focus needs to be on enforcement.
“Law enforcement needs to be prioritized, and the rules and laws that we have on the books right now need to be enforced,” Crawley said.
But it is FWC who has jurisdiction over the waters surrounding the island and indeed has the authority to make this a vessel exclusion zone, especially if more nesting behavior is observed.
“And they (FWC) are coming back out again in December,” said Reynolds. “And we hope that we do monthly data collection to establish potentially other species that are going through courting and carrying nesting material right now at.”
Crowley said that FIND has not made a final decision on whether it will award the city the 4.3 million dollar grant for Morningside Park improvements. That vote will happen in January.