Posted on Nov 12, 2023
A tiny deer and rising seas: How far should people go to save an endangered species?
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https://www.npr.org/2023/11/12/ [login to see] /key-deer-florida-keys-sea-level-rise
Millenia ago, when much of North America was covered in ice, a distant relative of a white-tailed deer grazed its way down a limestone ridge to the southeast edge of the continental U.S. Over time, as the ice melted and seas rose, the limestone ridge was reduced to a series of shrinking islands — or keys — off the South Florida coast. The deer, trapped and isolated from its mainland relatives, shrank too.
Today, the Key deer — or toy deer, as it's sometimes called because of its dog-size stature — is the smallest deer species in North America. It is genetically unique and ridiculously cute. It is Bambi, incarnate.
It is also, possibly, doomed.
Millenia ago, when much of North America was covered in ice, a distant relative of a white-tailed deer grazed its way down a limestone ridge to the southeast edge of the continental U.S. Over time, as the ice melted and seas rose, the limestone ridge was reduced to a series of shrinking islands — or keys — off the South Florida coast. The deer, trapped and isolated from its mainland relatives, shrank too.
Today, the Key deer — or toy deer, as it's sometimes called because of its dog-size stature — is the smallest deer species in North America. It is genetically unique and ridiculously cute. It is Bambi, incarnate.
It is also, possibly, doomed.
A tiny deer and rising seas: How far should people go to save an endangered species?
Posted from npr.org
Wildlife
State of Florida
Climate Change
Posted 7 mo ago
Responses: 1
4
4
0
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."We are doing the best we can for as long as we can"
If love for Key deer was measured in wall space, Valerie Preziosi would be the clear winner. A retired nurse, Preziosi is founder and president of the nonprofit conservation group Save Our Key Deer and is also a photographer. Her home, on a narrow strip of land south of Big Pine Key, is filled with photos of resident deer. Fuzzy-antlered bucks. Dot-speckled does.
"The key deer is like an umbrella species that covers all of the lesser-known endangered species underneath them," she said as a herd grazed on her grass outside.
Preziosi has heard all of the options for the Key deer: Let them go extinct, move them to the Bahamas or mainland Florida, where they could successfully breed with normal white-tailed deer, or put them in zoos.
She's familiar with federal, state and nonprofit efforts to preserve and restore habitat. An ongoing project by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission aims to restore Big Pine Key's largest freshwater wetland.
"We are doing the best we can for as long as we can," Colangelo said.
For Preziosi, the question of what to do in the long term comes down to ethics.
"This is not a natural event, this is human-caused," she said, of rapidly increasing sea-level rise. "So we owe it to these deer to preserve them the best that we can. So if we need to translocate them to higher ground, we should do that."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has no active plans to move deer to new environments, but the agency's director, Martha Williams, said she'd like to "not take any tools off the table."
"We have always looked at the Endangered Species Act as creatively and flexibly as we can," she said, noting efforts the Biden administration has undertaken to expand potential habitats for threatened and endangered species.
In July, the Department of Interior published a new rule allowing, for the first time, "experimental populations" of species to be introduced to places they haven't "historically lived."
Climate change is significantly changing habitats for wildlife all over the world. Ocean temperatures are soaring, scorching coral reefs. Precipitation patterns are shifting. Hotter air temperatures are causing plants and animals to move to higher, cooler elevations and new latitudes, north and south.
Off the shore of a slowly disappearing Big Pine Key, on the Gulf of Mexico's bathtub warm waters, Colangelo said she thinks it's well-past time wildlife managers and conservationists start "considering other strategies that maybe we haven't considered before."
"We can't stand back and do nothing," she said. "Our mission is to conserve and protect fish, wildlife and plants. But where is society on that?"
..."We are doing the best we can for as long as we can"
If love for Key deer was measured in wall space, Valerie Preziosi would be the clear winner. A retired nurse, Preziosi is founder and president of the nonprofit conservation group Save Our Key Deer and is also a photographer. Her home, on a narrow strip of land south of Big Pine Key, is filled with photos of resident deer. Fuzzy-antlered bucks. Dot-speckled does.
"The key deer is like an umbrella species that covers all of the lesser-known endangered species underneath them," she said as a herd grazed on her grass outside.
Preziosi has heard all of the options for the Key deer: Let them go extinct, move them to the Bahamas or mainland Florida, where they could successfully breed with normal white-tailed deer, or put them in zoos.
She's familiar with federal, state and nonprofit efforts to preserve and restore habitat. An ongoing project by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission aims to restore Big Pine Key's largest freshwater wetland.
"We are doing the best we can for as long as we can," Colangelo said.
For Preziosi, the question of what to do in the long term comes down to ethics.
"This is not a natural event, this is human-caused," she said, of rapidly increasing sea-level rise. "So we owe it to these deer to preserve them the best that we can. So if we need to translocate them to higher ground, we should do that."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has no active plans to move deer to new environments, but the agency's director, Martha Williams, said she'd like to "not take any tools off the table."
"We have always looked at the Endangered Species Act as creatively and flexibly as we can," she said, noting efforts the Biden administration has undertaken to expand potential habitats for threatened and endangered species.
In July, the Department of Interior published a new rule allowing, for the first time, "experimental populations" of species to be introduced to places they haven't "historically lived."
Climate change is significantly changing habitats for wildlife all over the world. Ocean temperatures are soaring, scorching coral reefs. Precipitation patterns are shifting. Hotter air temperatures are causing plants and animals to move to higher, cooler elevations and new latitudes, north and south.
Off the shore of a slowly disappearing Big Pine Key, on the Gulf of Mexico's bathtub warm waters, Colangelo said she thinks it's well-past time wildlife managers and conservationists start "considering other strategies that maybe we haven't considered before."
"We can't stand back and do nothing," she said. "Our mission is to conserve and protect fish, wildlife and plants. But where is society on that?"
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