What a waste!!!

[riverjop]

So the other day I decided to take a walk while I was down here in Naples Florida. I found an area just south of Tamiami Trail (Rte 41) that looked interesting by using Goggle Earth. I parked the car in a Pubilix grocery store parking lot and proceeded to walk a couple of blocks down the side walk to the area I had checked out from the satilight's view. I get close to the area when I read some real estate signs, telling me that this whole area is for sale, to be developed into another mega shopping center or some condos for the hordes of blue hairs that flock here in the winter. As I get to the entrance into the area I read a small sign that says "trespassing is a felony". Thinking that thats all I need, I keep walking until another couple hundred yards I find an opening in the "impenetrable jungle/forest that had run along the side of the road. I ended up walking a about 4 miles and counted seven (7) Gopher tortoises, one (1) Armadillo, one (1) Black snake (probably a racer) And countless lizards scurrying here and there. But most of all I was impressed with the amount of tracks that crossed and zigzagged in front of me, through the soft sand. It was like a tapestry of foot prints, each one with it's own story to tell. To be continued

 

[riverjop]

continued

There was a large population of tortoises there as I could tell by the many tracks of all different sizes that went every which way. There were also large lizard like tracks that every once in awhile I came upon, with the larger sized tail drags and definite foot prints. These I weren't to sure of? They would definitely be quite large lizards, possibly the now established Nile monitors or the spiny tailed Iguanas that have been introduced into the southwestern part of Florida. Were they just the tails of armadillos that dragged behind as they crossed? But there were also large and smaller sizes, I guess there could be large and small size armadillo's. Hmmm a mystery to me, as I am not familiar to Armadillos, as I grew up in the west. Also I found while walking, about three different "drag" marks, that crossed straight across the trail. These were about four (4) inches wide and spanned the trail from side to side, they did meander a bit just like a snake would do as it slowly inched along. Were these snakes? Wow if they were they would be huge! They would most certainly be large pythons or Boas that have also been released and are now establishing there selves in the Everglades. The sad thing is that all of this will soon be lost to the developers hungry for another buck! Sad indeed!!!

 

[malt_geckos]

That's cool that you got to see that stuff but sad that it will be destroyed. We live in Central Florida and the development is getting outrageous. There's absolutely no need for TONS more condos here when the ones we have aren't even close to being full. Do you know if you take pictures of the gopher turtles, and call Florida Fish and Wildlife, I think they will do something about it. I know there was a project here and they stopped it because of the gopher turtles. They wanted the project to start again so they paid a tortoise club to come and capture and safely relocate the animals. It's not like they can get out of the way. They will just be burried in their tunnles.

 

[paulnj]

Unfortunately the gopher totoise is only a species of special concern, so that alone can't stop development (atleast in NJ where I live).

Try getting help here
http://www.gophertortoisecouncil.org/

God luck