Lake Tarpon's water quality was a mess. A new report says it has gotten better.
For decades, water managers have treated the lake with expensive herbicides and mechanical harvesting of hydrilla, an invasive aquatic plant that crowds out native species and clogs boat propellers. It was often a losing battle.
The aquatic weed even contributed to a fatal personal watercraft accident in 2000 when a man on a WaveRunner swerved to avoid a patch of hydrilla, throwing his passenger into the water where he drowned.
One year later, the district published an update to its surface water plan, citing an alarming decline in water quality.
When Southwest Florida Water Management District staff on Thursday unveiled the first surface water plan in more than two decades, water managers appeared much more optimistic.
About half a dozen residents joined project managers at the Brooker Creek Preserve Center in Tarpon Springs, where Lake Tarpon water managers announced a 'hold the line' strategy — a turning point in the lake's health.
Chris Anastasiou, the water management district's chief water quality scientist for the surface water program, said about 90% of the lake's submerged plants are healthy, which has created a thriving ecosystem and bass fishery.
It took years of hard work to get here, and water managers can't drop their guard now, he added.
'Holding the line does not mean do nothing. It actually takes a lot of work to hold the line,' Anastasiou said.
A draft lake management plan, published in August, credits Lake Tarpon's revival to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's recent efforts to treat hydrilla outbreaks early.
Water managers keep invasive species at bay by spraying herbicide and collecting the aquatic weed with a marine tractor that scoops it from the surface. But in the 1990s, hydrilla growth had become out of control.
A low point occurred in 1992, when lake managers treated 500 acres of hydrilla. In 1993, one resident told the then-St. Petersburg Times she had never seen an outbreak as bad in her 20 years working at a marina on the lake.
Since 2010, fewer than 100 acres have been treated each year, according to the water management district.
Lake Tarpon managers track the presence of hydrilla by measuring chlorophyll-a, a pigment used in photosynthesis.
In 2001, they set a goal of 14 micrograms per liter, which managers based on data collected in Lake Tarpon between 1990 and 1992 — a very healthy period just before the lake's water quality nosedived.
Water managers acknowledged in the plan that chlorophyll-a levels have remained 'well above' that goal over the last 25 years, though the report states Lake Tarpon is 'a very healthy system.'
Anastasiou said he doesn't know why chlorophyll levels have remained so high despite the absence of hydrilla for many years. It's something that future research will need to address.
Residents in attendance Thursday evening asked scientists about the effects of native species, drawdowns and hurricanes on the lake. Human impact was a main concern.
Liz Lindsay, who has lived in Pinellas County for more than 30 years, said she was concerned with development encroaching on Lake Tarpon. She recently moved to north county after St. Petersburg became too crowded, she said.
'How are you able to keep up with the amount of development?' she asked. 'It seems like just everybody wants to move to Florida now. Are they really paying attention to the negative impacts of all this development?'
In 1999, developed areas made up 38% of the lake's watershed. By 2020, urban land had grown to about 45%, according to the draft plan.
Urban lakes often struggle with high nutrient loads that can feed algae blooms, but managers said that doesn't appear to be an issue for Lake Tarpon.
Since 2003, levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are common in lawn fertilizer, have remained within managers' goals.
Still, water managers asked homeowners to avoid excessive fertilizer use, especially in neighborhoods in the southwest and northeast portions of the lake where drastic elevation slopes quickly channel runoff into the lake.
Anastasiou said development doesn't always spell doom for Florida's water bodies. He pointed to Sarasota Bay, which the state removed from the impaired water bodies list last year after county officials prioritized stormwater improvements and habitat restoration.
'You can have both. It's hard. It takes a lot of money,' he said.
While celebratory in tone, the new lake plan echoed managers' caution.
'Careful attention is needed to ensure that the progress made over the past two decades is not lost due to land use change, sea level rise, climate change and other impacts,' the plan states.
The draft plan will presented to the water management district's governing board in March before being sent for final review.
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The Wildlife Corridor is also a favorite place for Florida sportsmen like Travis Thompson. Thompson is a life-long hunter and executive director of the conservation-minded nonprofit All Florida, which seeks to bring hunters and conservationists into the same room when making environmental policy. Thompson, like many sportsmen in Florida, believes strongly that both groups share the same environmental goals. (Hard numbers reveal the scale of America's trophy-hunting habit) Thompson grew up in Florida, where he spent his summers snook fishing and his winters at turkey camps. 'My Saturday mornings were in a dove field or a turkey blind or at a boat ramp, catching fish,' Thompson says. His desire to hunt and his wish to protect wild places are tightly bound. 'Everything I do is through the lens of conservation,' he says. Today, Thompson is mostly a duck hunter. 'I love ducks more than anyone you'll find. I don't want to shoot all the ducks in the world. I want to make sure there are plenty of ducks so I can shoot a bunch every year.' This perspective, he says, is the same one a lot of hunters bring to the environment: they want to protect it to continue to do what they love. Though Thompson isn't a bear hunter—'I don't have any interest in hunting a bear,' he says— he believes science should guide wildlife management decisions. And the scientists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who make the decisions about hunting Florida black bears: 'They're the best bear scientists I know,' Thompson says. A Florida black bear walking through a swamp of 500-year-old cypress tree on Bergeron's Green Glades West cattle ranch, adjacent to Big Cypress National Preserve and the Seminole Tribe of Florida's Big Cypress Reservation. The swamps fill with water during the summer and autumn rainy season. The bears in the Big Cypress subpopulation are the southernmost in the United States. Without the Florida Wildlife Corridor, bears in Big Cypress subpopulation and other wildlife like the Florida panther could be cut off from the rest of the state and country. Too few bears vs. too many The FWC is one of the largest fish and wildlife conservation agencies in the nation, with a significant portion of its $600 million budget dedicated to wildlife research, habitat assessment and data collection and analysis. 'We're here to do good science,' says George Warthen, the agency's chief conservation officer. Like Thompson, Warthen grew up in Florida and is an avid hunter. Hunting has been an important part of his conservation journey. 'What draws me to hunting is my connection to nature,' he says. 'I can't imagine leaving Florida because of my connection to the land.' The pull toward a 3 a.m. wakeup and early morning stints alone in the woods is not that different from the impulse that draws wildlife photographers, he says. (Bears at Disney World? Get used to it, experts say.) Like many, Warthen advocates for allowing the data to guide decisions around Florida black bear protection—including possibly allowing the first black bear hunt in the state in a decade. 'As wildlife managers, we want to step in before an animal overpopulates,' Warthen says. 'When any wildlife species starts to reach the upper limits of what a habitat will support, overall health of the population can begin to decline because of increased stress on individuals competing for resources. This can lead to disease outbreaks, lower reproductive rates in females and increased infanticide by male bears. The combination of these factors can lead to declines in the population which are much harder for wildlife managers to predict, and therefore manage, for long-term sustainability of the population.' Among the 40 states in the United States with resident black bear populations, Florida is one of only six that does not allow a regulated hunt. The other five cite low bear population numbers for why they prohibit bear hunts within their borders. Connecticut has roughly 1,200 bears; Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Ohio have less than 250 each. The eye of a young Florida bear cub, who was identified with its siblings by biologists from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission during a den study. The cubs' location was known because their mother had been given a GPS collar the previous summer. Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission biologists Darcy Doran-Myers and Shelby Shiver carry Florida black bear cubs a short distance from their den in Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge to a clearing where the had space to study and record measurements for the cubs. Warthen is careful to make a distinction between previous eras in the state's history, where unregulated hunting was detrimental to wildlife populations, and this modern one. 'Not a single game species has gone extinct—or come even close—in North America in the modern era of regulated hunting,' he says. 'Instead, if we look at deer and turkey as prime examples, we see where the population exploded as money from hunters went toward restoration.' He believes the story of the Florida black bear can be a similar one: The more groups that want to protect the bear—from hunters to scientists to conservationists—the more people who will ultimately be in the bear's camp. The vote on whether to move forward with the bear hunt is scheduled to take place at the FWC's next quarterly meeting, held August 13 and 14 in Havana, Florida. The commission's seven commissioners will vote on the issue. If it goes forward, the hunt will be held for three weeks in December, between December 6 and December 28, and span four Bear Management Units: central, east panhandle, north and south (with the exception of Big Cypress National Preserve, where bear hunting will not be permitted). Hunters will be allowed to hunt within the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which is composed of a mosaic of public and private lands, including many of the state's wildlife management areas. The hunting permits would be granted by a lottery process. (Revered and feared: the history of Florida's elusive panthers) The FWC has provided opportunities for the public to voice opinions on the hunt both in-person and on-line, and groups for and against the hunt plan to pack the room the during the commissioners' meeting. The anti-hunt group Bear Defenders has called for statewide protests on Saturday, August 9, with locations in 13 cities across Florida. Many Floridians are passionately opposed to the hunt. 'It's going to be a disaster,' says Kate MacFall, Florida State Director of Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society. MacFall remembers Florida's 2015 bear hunt, when 304 bears were killed in the first two days of the hunt—some of them cubs, some of them lactating mothers. FWC officials were forced to end the hunt early. MacFall calls it a fiasco. 'People were appalled. It made Florida look bad. The commission seems to have forgotten that, and we're headed down the wrong path again.' MacFall is particularly alarmed by the potential use of dogs, archery and baiting in upcoming bear hunts. 'We are asking the FWC to remove the worst kinds of cruelty,' she says. 'While they are moving ahead with the hunt, we do have an opportunity to make it less cruel.' Florida is set to decide whether to reinstate a limited hunt for black bears, a move that has drawn both supporters and critics. Where bears belong The Florida Wildlife Federation has been involved with minimizing the potential harm and risks of a bear hunt, including baiting and artificial feed stations. The Federation's president and CEO, Sarah Gledhill, says that the group's focus is on prioritizing the coexistence between bears and humans through education and better waste management. Its biggest hope for the preservation of the Florida black bear? 'Conserving large tracts of land, building wildlife crossings and restoring habitat that has been degraded over time,' Gledhill says. Conservation biologists sometimes ask themselves why they do what they do. Why they go through all the heartache and expense and hardship of saving a species—any species. Guthrie, who collared M34 as a graduate student and has since committed his career to protecting Florida bears, puts it simply: because they belong in this world. 'We get to share this planet with these fascinating, mysterious animals,' he says. 'No matter how closely we study them, we will never know what their lives are. But I'm still compelled by the mystery of their existence, how they live right under our noses and yet remain these enigmas, able to survive a thing like hibernation and raise their young for the next generation. I think some of us should dedicate our time and energy to making sure they last.'
