- April 20, 2024
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Flagler County’s Bulow Park might become a haven for threatened gopher tortoises from all over Florida, if the Flagler County Board of County Commissioners authorizes a conservation easement for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to protect the critters.
The issue is part of a consent agenda for the commission’s Monday, Feb. 17 meeting.
If it’s approved, the site within the park could hold up to 70 tortoises, Flagler County Environmental Planner Tim Telfer said.
“They essentially can come from anywhere within Florida,” he said in an email. “Any relocations to this site must be approved by Flagler County and permitted by the FWC.”
Tortoises would be relocated to the site after being moved from areas where they’re threatened by development.
Before they’re moved, they’ll be checked for infectious diseases, Telfer said, and because tortoises tend to wander home when they’re relocated, the incoming tortoises would have to be held in a screen enclosure on the site for months until they build a burrow.
“Without this temporary enclosure, gopher tortoises have an amazing ability to find their way home via some type of not-yet-understood ‘internal GPS,’” Telfer said. “The ‘soft enclosure’ is necessary and required to acclimate them to their new home.”
The Bulow Park site already has a gopher tortoise population, and the easement will help maintain a healthy tortoise population within the county, Telfer said. Most gopher tortoise relocation sites are in South Florida.
The easement would require the county to follow a land management plan typical for pine flatwoods areas, but the requirements for managing fire and vegetation are ones the county would be following even without a conservation easement, Telfer said.
