Your Help Needed

[Arthur Morris]

Roseate Spoonbill sky-pointing

The Roseate Spoonbill image above was made at Sunken Island Cove, Alafia Banks, with the 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, the 1.4X II TC, and the EOS1D Mark III camera body. This yielded an effective focal length of 1568mm (31.4X magnification). I would guess that James Shadle and I were about 100 feet from the birds. Audubon Florida is requesting “a 100-foot buffer zone, extended across the mouths of the Bird Island and Sunken Island Coves, to provide a safe and quiet area of no-entry, except by sanctuary staff conducting bird census, monitoring, or management activities.” (Please note my wry smile at the exceptions.) The extended across the mouths of the Bird Island and Sunken Island Coves would prevent photographers from approaching within about 300 feet of the sandbar at Sunken Island.

Your Help is Needed

In lieu of the information below–please be sure to read the whole thing–and then click here and sign the petition. Signing will take well less than a minute.

Why should everyone sign it? There are lots of reasons:

The Florida Wildlife Commission (FWC), in conjunction with (and surely encouraged by) Audubon Florida, want to impose up to 300 feet boundaries around 20 existing Critical Wildlife Areas (CWA). The boundaries would negatively affect the quiet enjoyment of nature by licensed touring companies, photographers, birders, recreational kayakers, educators, and others interested in Florida wildlife.

No one involved has provided any scientific data supporting the benefits of increased boundaries. In fact, the FWC/Audubon wildlife species survey shows an increase in wildlife population at numerous Critical Wildlife Areas.

Below are some examples (based on estimates of the number of nesting pairs, by species, made by Florida Audubon via direct counts and flight-line surveys) at Alafia Banks, the area of my primary concern.

White Ibis in 2004: 7,750. In 2014: 4,650. In 2015: 11,000.
Roseate Spoonbill in 2011: 190 (a precipitous drop from the previous 7-year average of 322). In 2015: 190.
Brown Pelican in 2004: 310. In 2014: 190. In 2015: 350.
Tricolored Heron in 2008: 90. In 2015: 165.
Total pairs in 2004: 9,724. Total pairs in 2014: 5,927. Total pairs in 2015: 12,440.

Yet Ann Paul, Regional Coordinator of Audubon’s Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuaries, and Mark Rachal, Sanctuary Manager, write in part:

For more than 75 years, Audubon wardens in Tampa Bay have been the keepers of these special places. At first, we protected them from the plume trade and harvest for food that almost drove these birds to extinction. But today, these nesting birds face a new and unexpected threat: catastrophic disturbance by nature photographers.And worse, a few unscrupulous tour leaders in Tampa Bay are giving nature photography a bad name, and threatening the future of our area’s vibrant waterbird colonies.

You might think “how much damage can one photographer do?” The impacts are cumulative and substantial. Some nature photographers lead customers on photo “safaris,” including vulnerable nesting colonies among their destinations. With clients in tow, some paying $450 per day to be escorted to prime sites, these tour operators are becoming serial disturbers.

How in the world any sane person could look at Audubon Florida’s own data and talk about catastrophic disturbance by nature photographers is far beyond me. And I would love to know what in the world the cost of a day on a pontoon boat has to do with anything. And I am curious as to the annual salary of Eric Draper, the Executive Director of Audubon Florida… See more on Mr. Draper below.

Most telling are the recent increase in the number of nesting Brown Pelican pairs. The White Ibises and spoonbills nest deep in the mangroves where they can only be disturbed by the researchers on their banding and counting forays. The pelicans, however, nest on the periphery of the island where one might think that they would be subject to disturbance by photographers in the water. Yet there numbers have increased…

Note also that most of the species in questions nest quite successfully in extremely close proximity to humans including dozens of nature photographers each day at Gatorland and the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. The stork have been doing great at both of these locations for many years and spoonbill numbers at St. Augustine have been increasing in recent years.

Interestingly enough, Mark Rachal (via personal comment to James Shadle) has stated that he is comfortable with a 50 foot buffer for photographers. And now Audubon is asking for 100-300 foot buffers…

James Shadle and Alafia Banks

My good friend James Shadle, a co-founder of Bird Photographer’s.Net, has taken more folks to Alafia Banks to photograph the spoonbills than all other operators combined multiplied by ten. In an e-mail to Ann Paul on March 11, 2015, I wrote:

I hope that you know down deep that both of us (James Shadle and I) are the good guys but I realize that I may very well be wrong. Speaking for myself, I know that I have followed the letter of the law for more than 30 years. I follow the rules, I don’t enter closed areas, I do my best to keep any disturbance that I might cause to an absolute minimum. If I see folks doing the wrong thing, I open my mouth and/or photograph them and their license plates (or their boats) and notify the authorities. I firmly believe that nature photographers who do the wrong thing should be cited and punished.

I know that James feels pretty much the same way on all of the above. We both teach folks how to approach the birds unobtrusively. He has cautioned many trespassing fisherman and yes, even picnickers on the island over the years. In the past he has offered to remove both old tires and non-native vegetation during the off season. His generous offers of help were turned down. We both offered to accompany an Audubon crew onto the island (on a banding landing) during nesting season to photograph the chicks and the survey operation and to then donate the images to Audubon. That offer was also turned down. One might assume that the powers that be at Florida Coastal Islands Sanctuary Audubon did not want us to see what goes on. Our offer still stands. As you know, I donated images to the federal folks managing Egmont Key after you and (late husband) Rich kindly arranged for me to visit a few years back.

I would be more than glad to donate images created at Alafia that would meet your needs. Let me know what they are and whether you need the images for web or for print and if the latter, what size. And I am positive that James would be glad to donate images that would help you get your message out. Similarly, I would be glad to publicize any important events for your group. My blog gets more than 3,000 visitors/day and enjoys about 15,500,000 page views annually.

Ann never responded to my e-mail.

If there are any factual errors above, I invite anyone from Florida Audubon to either leave a comment or to contact me via e-mail.

From Rob Christy via e-mail:

Last Mothers Day, while photographing at Coffee Pot Bayou near St. pete, we were quietly in position about 30 feet from the island in my 19 foot flats boat. We changed position depending on the bird’s activity with my electric trolling motor. All of a sudden a large touring vessel, the Dolphin Queen, shows up with Ann Paul on the ship’s PA system. At the time I had no idea who the person yelling at us was. I discovered later that it was Ann because I looked at the Dolphin Queen’s Facebook page when I got home. Apparently this Mothers Day trip is run every year by the St. Pete Audubon Society with Ann doing the narration. I could kick myself for not making a video of what happened with my I Phone. I guess that I was so shocked and surprised by what happened as when I had been out there in the past we would frequently always see the Dolphin Queen at close range without incident.

A Question for Eric Draper, Executive Director of Audubon Florida

Here is my question for Mr. Draper:

Why did you choose not to respond to the letter below, sent to you via e-mail by Rob Christy last spring? (Rob’s e-mail below has been amended slightly without changing his meaning or intent.)

Dear Mr. Draper,

To introduce ourselves; we are a small group of experienced wildlife photographers who have published work in BBC Earth and National Geographic among others. One of our group members, is the long -time President of the Venice Camera Club. All of us have won many awards for our Florida wildlife images including Audubon Society contests.

Last Sunday (Mothers’ Day) we were aboard a small 18 foot boat which encountered your tour at the Coffee Pot Bayou on the chartered Dolphin Queen. We have been to this rookery many times taking photographs while not disturbing the wildlife. Oftentimes, the Dolphin Queen has been cruising around the island as well- until now, there had never been an issue.

On Sunday, we were quietly floating as always and only occasionally repositioned our boat with a noiseless electric trolling motor. In fact, we moved it closer to the island to make way for the 44 foot Dolphin Queen.

Unfortunately the peaceful silence was suddenly interrupted by the Dolphin Queen’s repeated passes while spewing obnoxious exhaust fumes. The noise from its loud combustion-engine and the screeching voice of the narrator caused a disturbing upheaval throughout the nesting bird colony.

To our surprise, Ann Paul, the narrator at the time, started to make rude and unjustified remarks about us and accused us of moving to close to the island and not caring about the wildlife. We were strongly offended by Ann Paul’s unprofessional and disrespectful behavior; she unwarrantedly vilified us and turned the boat’s passengers against us in a most insulting and vulgar manner.

We feel that you should be aware of the nature of this individual and her insulting behavior. Hopefully this was an isolated incidence and we can continue to recommend the Dolphin Queen again to our friends, families, and clients.

Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Rob Christy

Thanks and best, artie