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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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NOVEMBER 2005
Wildlife in the hard-hit Gulf region is most imperiled by human activity
Hurricane Katrina first hit wildlife along the east coast of Florida.
“About 200 loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings born on Hutchinson Island were unable to crawl through deposits of sea grass washed ashore by the storm,” Palm Beach Post staff writer Kimberly Miller reported. “Beachgoers from Delray Beach south found about two dozen hatchlings that experts believe made it into the water, but were spit back worn out onto the beach by the waves.”
Treated for dehydration and exhaustion by the Gumbo Limbo Environmental Complex in Boca Raton and the Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, most were returned to the sea within days.
There they encountered a new threat. After hurricanes the National Marine Fisheries Service often suspends the requirement that shrimpers must use turtle exclusion devices (TEDS) on their nets, because floating debris often fouls TEDS and tears nets.
The timing of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma meant that the TED rule was continuously suspended from September 26 to November 23.
Meanwhile, as Katrina roared westward, about 50 sea turtle nests were destroyed along the Alabama coast. Habitat for the endangered Alabama beach mouse and red-cockaded woodpecker was also destroyed.
Rita and Wilma did similar damage on Caribbean islands and along the coast of Mexico.
“Sea turtles are well-adapted to survive even intense natural disasters such as hurricanes,” noted Janice Blumenthal of the Cayman Islands Department of Environment. “It is human impacts such as accidental capture in shrimp nets, hunting turtles and eggs, long-line fishing, and loss of nesting and feeding habitat which threatens sea turtles with extinction.”
“Hurricane Katrina washed away sea turtle eggs, tore holes in beaches and drowned alligator nests in the Everglades,” observed David Fleshler of the Florida Sun-Sentinel. “But scientists and environmental officials expect most of the effect to be temporary.”
Agreed Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist Thomas Eason, “Wildlife in Florida have co-evolved with hurricanes for thousands, if not millions of years. Bears, deer, and panthers hole up on some high ground or find a safe spot and weather the storm. Butterflies wedge themselves into tree hollows, sharks head to open water, and migratory birds delay flights.”
Among the 120 nonmigratory Mississippi sandhill cranes at the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Gautier, 31 of 32 with radio transmitters survived Katrina and Rita, biologist Scott Hereford told Gary Holland of the Biloxi Sun Herald––but 31 of the 35 observation posts on the refuge were damaged or destroyed.
“The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, in charge of 16 now-closed refuges along the Louisiana coast, said the storms reduced the Breton National Wildlife Refuge from more than 18,000 acres to barely 9,000, and caused $94 million worth of damage to facilities,” wrote Dina Capiello of the Houston Chronicle.
While missing major cities, Rita actually hit protected habitat harder than Katrina, “wreaking havoc on more 300,000 acres of state and federal wildlife refuges in southwest Louisiana, pushing the salty Gulf of Mexico into freshwater marshes, washing away levees, killing animals, and possibly further eroding fragile coastal areas,” wrote Richard Burgess of the Baton Rouge Advocate.
“The largely rural region hit by Rita is home to four federal and three state refuges,” Burgess wrote, “from the 124,511-acre Sabine National Wildlife Refuge in Cameron Parish to the 9,000-acre Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge, set aside in 2001 as habitat for the Louisiana black bear.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom MacKenzie guesstimated that the damage from Rita would cost about $41.7 million to repair.
Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries staff told Jason Brown of the Lafayette Advertiser that the hurricanes might cost the state hunting and fishing industry $2.3 billion over the next two years––about 16% of the expected gross.
Two weeks before the November 1 opening of the 2005 Louisiana deer season, basic hunting license sales were down 56%, and big game permit sales were down 65%.
Near Cameron, Louisiana, high water made state highway 27 an evening haunt of turtles and alligators, the latter apparently hunting nutria, reported Jennifer Steinhauer of Associated Press.
At Moss Point, Mississippi, the Gulf Coast Gator Ranch lost about 200 alligators. About 80 were recovered during the next six weeks. The same ranch lost 30 alligators during Hurricane Georges in September 1998, Associated Press recalled.
“The manatees who grazed in Lake Pontchartrain before Hurricane Katrina haven’t been seen since,” Janet McConnaughey of Associated Press noted on October 13, “but eight dolphins were leaping in the lake this week.”
Observed Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation executive director Carlton Dufrechou, “If the big critters are back, the lake is definitely coming back.”
Dufrechou pointed out that the dolphins and flocks of pelicans soaring over the lake appeared to be feeding successfully, an indication that the food chain had survived.