This is an eloquent article written by Jeannie Mounger, PhD, plant biologist & field applications scientist. A glossary of terms (that I had to look up!) is below the article.

I wrote the statement below for the Jonathan Dickinson group, but it’s worth sharing here. As we all know, Honeymoon Island is a fragile and shifting barrier island. Those of us who’ve spent considerable time out there throughout our lives have watched the boundaries of the island shift before us. Several of the pavilions and parking lots are currently under threat of being damaged or lost due to this erosion. And as a plant biologist who conducted a portion of my PhD work on red mangroves at Honeymoon, I’ve also witnessed the dieback of mangrove trees due to this very erosion. Some of this erosion and mangrove dieback is natural — barrier islands are dynamic places that are constantly in flux. And some of this is the result of climate change, from increasingly violent storms to sea level rise.

This is the last place that anyone should consider putting yet another impervious surface, especially the very agency tasked with its protection.

THE CLAW

I want to share a story about another golf course that was built on state-owned public lands, the University of South Florida course known as The Claw, as I think what has happened to it will serve as a warning.

The Claw was built in 1967 on approximately 130 acres which were carved from conservation lands endowed to the university, land that prior to its destruction contained a mix of now-endangered *sandhill uplands and **bottomland forests which served as a ***floodplain for Cypress Creek and the Hillsborough River. As such, the course frequently flooded, and it was difficult for a public entity like USF to financially maintain. The club’s outbuildings fell into such disrepair that they were condemned, and equipment was rented out of a storage container. Students and community members alike didn’t want to trudge through soggy holes to play on a dilapidated old course. The course was finally shuttered in 2023 following a decade of low attendance and rising management costs.

Now, the university wants to build a “micro-city” full of shopping centers and hotels on this land, which sits directly next door to the USF Forest Preserve, one of the last remaining endangered sandhill habitats in Hillsborough County. The Forest Preserve itself was almost lost to this idiotic vision in 2021, when out-of-touch administrators quietly solicited development proposals for both it and the golf course property. As a then-grad student at USF and plant biologist, I fought hard with my peers and my community to ensure the Forest Preserve’s protection, but it is threatened anew by the massive footprint proposed next door.

“PEOPLE WHO NEVER LEARNED TO VALUE NATURE”

Golf courses are shuttering around the country. Interest in the sport is at a record low. Once these fragile ecosystems like ****coastal scrub and sandhill are razed to make way for a fad or a failing sport, once they are just mounds of turfgrass and dirt, the argument for increasingly more destructive development proposals becomes increasingly legitimized in the eyes of people who never learned how to value nature.

These plans in our beautiful state parks have to end here, and we have to fight hard to repair our badly eroded environmental regulatory agencies and state laws to prevent this from ever being proposed again. Keep these amazing support networks growing. I know we can do it.

*A sandhill is also a type of ecological community, or xeric [of an environment or habitat containing little moisture; very dry.] ecosystem. Sandhills are found on the crests and slopes of rolling hills and ridges, with deep, well-drained, and nutrient poor soils.

**A bottomland is defined as a location in the landscape that periodically floods (often within a 100-year floodplain), but standing water is usually absent during the growing season.

***An area of low-lying ground adjacent to a river, formed mainly of river sediments and subject to flooding.

**** A plant community that grows on gentle hills above the ocean and is characterized by low-growing shrubs with still leaves and flexible branches.

WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

A well-maintained course has its own toxic footprint. Read about how dangerous they are for our ecosystem, for our bodies & for our future here.

It’s time to speak out against these assaults on our wild spaces. I have put together a cheat sheet of whom to contact for the current threat to our Florida parks.

STAY IN THE BUNGALOW KNOW!!!

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