On August 7th, Andy and Rowan joined Carissa Kent and Dave to help remove the gopher tortoises from a half acre property that was cleared on August 8th. Carissa is the Director of Saving Florida’s Gopher Tortoises. Her group is the only group in the state that focuses only on recovering tortoises that exist on properties with Incidental Take Permits. ITP’s were issued between 1991 and 2007 prior to the gopher tortoise being uplisted to threatened in 2007. These permits have no expiration date.
What does this mean for the tortoise? Any developer that has an ITP can legally entomb tortoises while developing the properties. They are under no legal obligation to relocate the tortoises. That means, these are “dead tortoises”.
There are thousands of these Incidental Take Permits that cover an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 tortoises. These tortoises are legally allowed to be killed, UNLESS Carissa and her team come in to save them.
Carissa and her team of volunteers have worked to save over 6,000 of these “dead tortoises” from a fate of being entombed under concrete, where it can take up to a year for a tortoise to slowly die. Moving these tortoises is no easy feat. It requires back breaking, hot, tiring work. It is all done by donations. The developers do not have to pay for this, but many do give donations to Carissa’s group. She has workd for several years to foster a good, working relationship to save the lives of these tortoises.
If you know of developments happening in gopher tortoise habitat, or if you have concerns about tortoises, you can contact :
Carissa Kent
Director, Saving Florida’s Gopher Tortoises
(407) 529-5006
CKtortoiserescue@gmail.com
She asks that you either email or text. She is often in areas that get very poor signal and text messages come through often better than a phone call.