None The Nature Conservancy in Florida Press Releases Search All Press Releases Jill Austin Phone: (407) 682-3664, ext. 129 E-mail: jaustin@tnc.org

Land Will Help Save Gopher Tortoises

Nature Conservancy and Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission deal expands relocation options.

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, FL — July 30, 2008 — The Nature Conservancy has donated two sites and sold another totaling nearly 1,000 acres to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) that will help protect the gopher tortoise, newly listed as a threatened species.

FWC purchased the 720-acre Davidson Ranch in Gilchrist County July 15 from The Nature Conservancy. In late June 20, FWC accepted the Conservancy’s donation of the 320-acre Janet Butterfield Brooks Preserve and the 30-acre Chinsegut Hill tract, both in Hernando County.

The Conservancy sold the property at a significant discount to the state - $2 million versus the FWC appraisal of $6.2 million – to advance the protection of the tortoise. The Davidson Ranch and Janet Butterfield Brooks sites will be surveyed in detail by FWC to determine their carrying capacity to accept relocated tortoises, but preliminary FWC and Conservancy data and visual inspections show both tracts are prime candidates for relocation sites.
 

Davidson Ranch, located in an area of increasing rural ranchette development, is a beautiful, old-growth longleaf pine sandhill forest with scattered oaks and wiregrass ground cover essential for a number of listed species, including gopher tortoise and Sherman’s fox squirrel. It is potentially critical habitat for other rare species such as Eastern indigo snake and southeastern kestrel.

“With the uplisting of the gopher tortoise to threatened status in April, developers can no longer acquire incidental take permits and either need to conserve tortoises or relocate them to quality sites. This transaction will help FWC do that,” said Wendy Caster, the Conservancy’s senior field representative who negotiated the project.

The Butterfield Brooks tract also contains high-quality, old-growth longleaf pine-dominated sandhill habitat and will be managed with gopher tortoise mitigation park management funds. FWC land management activities will be focused on providing optimum habitat for listed wildlife populations. The Chinsegut tract, also composed of sandhill habitat, will become a part of the Chinsegut Wildlife and Environmental Area and will provide more area for the public to view and enjoy wildlife observation.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. With funding from the Florida Forever program and our generous donors the Conservancy has helped protect more than 1.2 million acres in Florida since 1961.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.