Let’s put the cold winter in
perspective, please
By Patricia Behnke
Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission
MyFWC.com
Nine days of unseasonably cold
weather in January hit us Florid-
ians hard; that’s for sure. But the
most vulnerable ended up being the
wildlife, particularly those that live
in or near salt water.
Manatees, sea turtles and saltwa-
ter fish all showed us their vulnera-
bility to changing temperatures, and
without help, many of those impact-
ed would not have survived. More
than 4,500 sea turtles were rescued,
with an 80-percent survival
rate. At last count nearly 300
manatee carcasses had been
recovered. Cold-stressed mana-
tees are still being rescued.
“It was an unprecedented
year; I’ve never seen anything
like it,” said Dr. Robbin Trin-
dell, a 13-year veteran with the
Florida Fish and Wildlife Con-
servation Commission’s (FWC) sea
turtle program. “We loaded a large
van with sea turtles rescued from
the Panhandle. I thought they were
all dead, but soon after they were re-
moved from the cold temperatures,
they began moving around.”
Trindell, who says she was only
one small part of the effort, credits
the survival rate of these rescued
sea turtles to tremendous efforts by
many agencies and volunteers who
gave up sleep during the many days
it took to pull off this gargantuan
job.
Before the last icicle melted in
North Florida, the public debate be-
gan on climate change and the cold
winter. It is important to remember
that weather occurs over the week-
end; climate occurs over the decades
and centuries. Climate looks to
trends, and the trends still point to
warming temperatures and major
shifts in climate.
Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech
University atmospheric scientist
and co-author of the 2009 “Global
Climate Change Impacts in the
United States,” stated recently that
climate change means extreme
events, globally.
In Florida, “extreme” means some-
thing different than to the rest of
the country. Because of our location
and our shape, we will experience
the impacts of sea-level rise most
immediately. Even though the num-
ber of hurricanes may not increase,
the intensity of the storms will, just
as the intensity of the snowstorms
in the northeast increased this year.
Even if you dispute the facts of
For wildlife managers, preparing for the is beneficial to both you and
extremes to help wildlife survive until
animals can adjust to the unpredictable
weather patterns is crucial.
climate change presented by the
world’s leading scientists and don’t the money collected goes to the FWC
believe droughts, floods, snowstorms and other organizations to support
or hurricanes have increased in in-
tensity and unpredictability over the The Conserve Wildlife plate depicts
past decade, perhaps you can agree
with something I read in the Pitts-
burgh Post Gazette in late February. funds for many other kinds of wild-
It summed up my feelings on this
subject exactly, and those thoughts
were written by someone who sits on
the opposite side of the fence from
me when it comes to climate change
philosophy. But his point is valid;
just because we might disagree does
not mean we don’t have some com-
mon ground on which to meet.
Greg Parks is a small-business
owner and local politician from
Pittsburgh. He wrote, “We have a
responsibility to our children and
their children to leave the planet in
a better condition than we found it.
To accomplish that task we must
put the partisan sniping behind us,
ignore the cash calls from the politi-
cal industrial complex and focus on
doable projects that can make a
positive impact on the environment
by the end of the decade.”
Who can disagree with that?
So let’s leave the climate change
discussion for another time and face
the facts. The global community
has seen some of the most extreme
weather conditions in the past
decade, and models suggest this will
continue. For wildlife managers,
preparing for the extremes to help
wildlife survive until animals can
adjust to the unpredictable weather
patterns is crucial. All of this work
requires funding in a time when our
economy can least afford it. But
there is one way to help that
wildlife.
Purchasing a specialty license
plate helps pay for research and
monitoring for some of our most
vulnerable wildlife. The plates
offered by the Wildlife Founda-
tion of Florida are manatee,
panther, sea turtle and bass, and all
those animals and their habitats.
Florida’s threatened black bear,
and money from that plate provides
life. Go to www.buyaplate.com for
more information.
When you give the tax collector
the extra money for the specialty
plate, you also purchase a great
piece of art to grace your energy-ef-
ficient vehicle. Save wildlife, support
art and conserve the planet – not
a bad way to spend a few bucks, no
matter what you believe.
Contact Patricia Behnke at
pat.behnke@MyFWC.com