April 2024

The Most Influential Sustainability Leaders In Southwest Florida In 2024

Many of the good news stories around the environment and sustainability focus on the differences that can be made by communities working together. The sheer scale of the climate events we're seeing means that individuals can often feel powerless until they join with other individuals, whether that means helping to clean a beach, promote water conservation or protect a coral reef (to offer just a few examples). What can’t be denied, however, is the vital part so often played in community action by leaders and role models setting an example. This story highlights six individuals from Southwest Florida who have been singled out as the most influential sustainability leaders in the region. From a champion of native plant life to a fisherman helping to co-ordinate a community response to Hurricane Ian, not to mention a leader of volunteer-based conservation efforts on Sanibel Island and a sustainability architect who recently announced her candidature for the Fort Myers City Council Ward 2 seat. What these disparate individuals all represent is a determination to use their skills to protect the environment of Southwest Florida, and to encourage others to come along for the ride.

Investments In Wildlife Corridor, Red Tide Mitigation Announced

It’s all too easy to be cynical about the actions of politicians and feel that – on issues like environmental sustainability in particular – change often has to be driven from the ground up. Sadly, that kind of thinking is all too understandable, and that’s precisely why we’re always keen to flag up examples of politicians making a commitment to positive action on the environment in Florida.

Legislation which was recently signed earlier this month in Naples, Collier County is one such example. Designed to help preserve the environment of Florida for future generations, the legislation (known as the Florida Red Tide Mitigation and Technology Development Initiative) extended a partnership between the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and More Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. The aim of that partnership was to look into techniques for mitigating and preventing the spread of red tide algal blooms off the coast of Florida. At the same time, more funding, to the tune of $100 million, is to be directed towards Florida’s Wildlife Corridor, an area of 18 million acres of land, of which 10 million acres are protected conservation land.

Florida Wildlife Corridor Study Reveals Role In Climate Resilience, Population Growth

The last story gave a mention to the Florida Wildlife Corridor, and this story puts it front and centre in the battle against the impacts of a changing climate. It concerns a recently published study which highlights, among many other things, the role played by the 18 million acres of the Wildlife Corridor in helping to reduce the worst of these.

The report focused on the way in which the land represented by the corridor is utilized as a space within which it is possible to welcome the many people (approximately 1000 every day) who come to live in Florida, whilst still allowing the local wildlife to thrive. As such, the Wildlife Corridor demonstrates that working toward sustainability needn’t always represent a binary choice between development and preservation and that, done properly, development can work alongside preservation to offer benefits to both the economy and the environment. While 10 million of the 18 million acres are rightly permanently conserved, the report called for further investment in the remaining 8 million acres. It also points out some of the uncomfortable facts which residents of Florida have to face up to – such as the fact that 24% of all Florida properties have a more than one in four chance of being impacted by flooding in the next 30 years. The Wildlife Corridor boasts 10 million acres of undeveloped floodplain, one of the most effective solutions to this increased risk of flooding.

The phrase ‘grasping at straws’ is generally used to invoke an image of someone desperately trying to come up with a solution to a problem, but for researchers in South Florida, this metaphor couldn’t be further from the truth.

The straws in question are biodegradable and the researchers are grasping at them as a solution to problem of fish trying to eat laboratory grown coral. The laboratory grown coral itself is a solution to another problem – the fact that rising ocean temperatures are causing coral in places such as South Florida and the Florida Keys to die off.  As well as working to protect existing coral, scientists grew new coral in laboratory conditions before planting them in the ocean. Protecting this particular ecosystem is vital, as it helps to maintain more than 25% of all marine species, but researchers found that predators such as parrot fish were attacking the new coral to such a degree that they had a less than 40% survival rate. The answer? A Coral Fort – a small biodegradable cage constructed partly from drinking straws which, once in place, helped to boost the survival rate of the coral to over 90%. Unlike previous stainless steel and PVC solutions, the biodegradable cages eventually dissolve without having to be cleaned or removed, and by this time the coral is mature and the fish lose interest in snacking on it.

Spinning Fish Mystery In Florida Keys

We’ve probably all heard tales of how animals and birds become particularly quiet in the period immediately preceding a dramatic natural even such as an earthquake, and tales like this are just one example of how wildlife often acts as a sort of ‘early warning system’ for environmental damage. We might be witnessing something of that type happening off the coast of Florida, according to this story, with the U.S. government mounting an emergency response triggered by what has been referred to as ‘abnormal fish behavior’.

Although as many as 40 species of fish could be involved, most of the concerns are centered upon the smalltooth sawfish, a species that is part of the ray family. The sawfish can grow to up to 16 feet in length, and is listed by NOAA as an endangered species. The behavior in question is, according to marine experts, unprecedented, and includes sightings of the fish spinning and twirling in the water, as well as unaccountable fish deaths. The effort to save the fish is the first such undertaken in the U.S., and involves the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as well as local partners such as Ripley’s Aquariums and the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, both of which offered quarantine facilities for stricken sawfish. Although the cause behind the behavior and the larger than usual number of fish dying currently remains a mystery, researchers have been able to rule out a communicable disease or bacterial infection, while factors such as oxygen, salinity and temperature are not thought to be factors.

Water Pollutant Could Be Soil Savior

If you’re an avid reader of the blogs we publish (and why wouldn’t you be) then you’ll know all about cyanobacteria (generally known as blue-green algae) and the issues it can cause for irrigation lakes and systems. We might have to go back and revise our blog a little, however, as newly published research indicates that while cyanobacteria might be very bad news for your sprinkler system, it could well be extremely good news for your soil.

The key to this good news is that the cyanobacteria and the algal blooms it causes, while they might contain toxins, also have a very high iron content, something which can’t be said for the soil in Florida. The research in question involved collecting naturally occurring cyanobacteria and using it to produce a bio fertilizer. The water and algae biomass used for the research was gathered from Lake Jesup in Central Florida, and then repurposed from the harvested slurry into a fertilizer for growing high value organic vegetables such as okra. The experiment in question took place over two year at Florida International University’s Organic Garden Shade House and Greenhouse. The findings were impressive, including the fact that the fertilizer, which contains 2,000 parts per million iron content, could reduce the cost of cultivation, improve water quality by reducing nutrient runoff, and boost the stability of the soil through lifting the levels of organic matter.

Research: Sea Levels Rising, But Is South Florida Sinking?

The issue of rising sea levels around the coast of Florida is one which we’ve mentioned many times in the H2O Zone, but recently published research, delivered by a team from Virginia tech, looked at the ways in which rising seas might combine with sinking land to deliver an even bigger threat to some US cities. And one of the cities highlighted was our very own Miami.

The paper suggests that the greatest risk of flooding by 2050 is likely to be driven by subsidence (sinking land) as much as by rising seas, and that Miami was at the top of the ‘at risk’ list, with potentially as many as 80,000 properties flooding by the middle of this century. Although the subsidence in places such as Miami Beach is only very slight, and driven by factors such as soil under buildings slowly compacting over many years, even slight sinking, when coupled with rising seas, rising groundwater levels and more intense rainfall, could make flooding more frequent and more intense. The report calls for more research into the degree of subsidence in cities and the impact it might have in regions such as the west coast of Florida, but in the meantime even a slight increase in the risk of flooding should be taken as just one more reason to tackle the problem as urgently as possible.