Big Pine animal shelter safe for another year

The Big Pine Animal Shelter appears to be safe for at least one more year.

The land use advisory committee for Keys Energy Services Utility Board has recommended that the utility extend the county’s lease on the animal shelter facility for another year.

The shelter is located on Industrial Road in Big Pine on land owned by Keys Energy, in a building owned until 2008 by Monroe County.

The county leased the land from Keys Energy in 1988 and spent about $70,000 building an animal control center for the island. The lease extended for 20 years, at which time the lease would expire and the building would revert to Keys’ ownership.

Had that occurred when anticipated, the county would have been looking for a new place to house the Big Pine shelter.

Keys had plans to build a solar farm on the land used by the shelter, and the utility was going to end the county’s lease on the land.

The utility, however, agreed to give the shelter two more years as they tried to put the solar farm deal together.

That plan did not come to fruition and the land use advisory committee agreed that the shelter could have at least one more year.

The Big Pine shelter is run by Stand Up For Animals, which also runs the Marathon shelter in a building on land the county owns outright. The contract for those services is scheduled to end in June 2010.

The county will have to either renegotiate a new contract with SUFA or bid the service.

Two years ago, when the lease was set to expire, county officials were simply going to do away with their contract with SUFA and allow the Key West Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to pick up the coverage area.

That idea didn’t sit well with local animal activists and the county agreed to extend the SUFA contract.

One of the reasons local folks were against eliminating an animal shelter on Big Pine was the existence of the Habitat Conservation Plan.

The HCP, and the Incidental Take Permit which resulted from it, is an agreement between the county, the state Departments of Community Affairs and Transportation and the US Fish & Wildlife Service that allows for limited human development on Big Pine and No Name Keys in exchange for habitat mitigation, usually in the form of land purchased for conservation.

The plan also outlines a need for a continued animal control presence on Big Pine Key to handle un-tethered dogs and feral cats. One has been labeled a menace to the endangered Key Deer that call the two islands home, the latter a menace to the endangered Lower Keys Marsh Rabbit.

County officials have not said whether they intend to try and negotiate another long-term lease on the current animal shelter from Keys Energy or seek a new location.

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