Hope for Florida gopher tortoises

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Florida's approach to saving gopher tortoises from extinction a decade ago allowed developers to bury the docile reptiles alive in their burrows in return for what critics called "blood money" that was used to buy and protect tortoise habitat elsewhere.

Thousands of tortoises a year were sentenced to death at the height of the building boom. In 2007, opposition from environmentalists and animal-rights advocates finally brought a halt to the state's "pay to pave" program.

Now, as development starts to show signs of recovery, nearly five years after government-sanctioned tortoise deaths were ended, defenders of the reptile say it is better off, though they don't yet know whether the state's new approach of relocating tortoises when they get in the way will ultimately save the creatures from oblivion.

"The main thing is they are not being buried anymore," said Matt Aresco, a Florida Panhandle ecologist who led opposition to the "entombment" of tortoises. "And the second thing is they are being put on protected sites."

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allows developers to move tortoises that are blocking construction just a short distance to an undisturbed area of the same development tract. Most of the time, though, developers pay the owners of designated ranches, timberland and other natural landscapes to take in tortoises from construction sites.

To be paid for adopting these long-living land dwellers, the landowners must permanently designate their acreage as green space and ensure it remains healthy -- not overgrown with brush, for example -- as tortoise habitat.

Deborah Burr, the state wildlife agency's tortoise coordinator, said the relocation policy appears to be working.

One reason for that high rate, she said, is that the transplanted tortoises must be fenced in for several months until they adapt to their new surroundings. Without that added measure, Burr said, "They'll walk themselves to death to get back to where they came from."

Florida's tortoises number in the hundreds of thousands. The state classified tortoises as threatened in 2007, the year entombments ended. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that, though the species is at risk of extinction, the agency doesn't have enough money to declare it threatened, as well.