Report was great until conclusions

Last week, representatives from climate change advocates and the Nature Conservancy presented a report to the Board of County Commissioners that was relatively bleak in its outlook.

The report estimates seven to 51 inches of sea level rise in the Florida Keys by the year 2100.

That’s a long way off for us, but it’s a relatively short time in geological measurements. And it’s a short enough time for us that our leaders need to begin to take a serious look at planning for the fact we’ll have less upland upon which to conduct business, or even live, over the course of the next decades.

The report presented by the Nature Conservancy dealt almost exclusively with the effects of sea level rise on Big Pine Key, the largest land mass in the Lower Keys and home to a multitude of endangered species, both flora and fauna.

The numbers are staggering with an anticipated loss of nearly 11 percent of land mass in the next 90 years at best, and a loss of much more than that at worst case scenario.

According to the report, Big Pine, as well as much of the Lower Keys, could be feeling the effects of sea level rise in a mere 20 years as projections call for anywhere from a three-inch to nine-inch rise by 2030.

Just that much rise, on the high end, could make most of Eden Pines open waterfront property and inland areas such as Pine Ridge, currently nearly a quarter mile from water, waterfront or water view property.

Even the smallest of the projections will do vast damage to our coastal habitat, killing native pines, changing salt marshes to tidal marshes and upland to salt marsh.

We know it’s a dream to ask our leaders to steer development away from low-lying coastal areas and move it back a little to eventually protect whatever residents may live there from the ill effects of sea level rise, but we can still ask.

The more pragmatic amongst us know that as a species we would rather win against Mother Nature than bow to her power, so we’ll see new developments built behind seawalls and levies and dikes, and we’ll watch as homes get built out over the water because it once was land.

To believe that anything else will happen is to fly in the face of man’s belief that he is the top dog on this planet.

The future will be what it is. We can help by not exacerbating the situation, but we’ve probably waited too long to actually do anything constructive about it.

The Nature Conservancy report, however, saddens us in a couple of ways.

It seems to be based on consensus science. It seems to take a compassionate approach to a serious problem.

What the report does, unfortunately, is fail to outline optional scenarios for adapting to sea level rise.

The Nature Conservancy is very good at what it does. It manages conservation lands and fragile habitat. It manages a good deal of pine rockland in the Lower Keys. The organization’s answer to management of pine rockland habitat is prescribed burning. The group is paid millions in grants yearly to manage by prescribed burn.

And the only “viable” economical method it gives for managing pine rocklands that are threatened by sea level rise is — drum roll please ? prescribed burning. Even biologists can’t agree that prescribed burning is the only method to manage pine rocklands. Yet, the report from the Nature Conservancy, one that rings alarm bells of a distant future, can find no other “viable” way to manage threatened pine rocklands.

The organization also makes very good income for its efforts from invasive exotic species removal programs. We all benefit from those programs.

And the method suggested by the Nature Conservancy report for delaying the transition of native habitat to another form is to allow the natives to fight off invasives and win the battle for fresh water in an ever-increasing salt environment.

They suggest increasing invasive exotic plant removal programs.

Of course. The report was great. It was an eye-opener and needed to be said, needed to be aired.

What it needed was options for mitigation that didn’t include only those methods for which the Nature Conservancy is paid big bucks in federal and state money to carry out.

There was talk of translocation to managed conservation lands. The Nature Conservancy is one of the largest owners of such lands in the world.

Perhaps a little less of the money-grab was in order. It clouds an issue that is bound to have a material effect on everyone in the Florida Keys.

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