Lake Apopka: so much wrong
Jan. 23rd, 2012 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessFlorida state agency discussing growing hydrilla, a non-native plant species, in Lake Apopka. Left out of this particular article is the fact that many communities are resentful that so much water is diverted to Lake Apopka as part of the lake restoration effort.
I'm not against all non-native species - I do, after all, have roses growing outside my window. But what I am against is the idea of using non-native species as an attempt to solve environmental issues. This almost never goes well, and you can see the results in South Florida, where the state, county governments and private landowners are having to spend millions to attempt to get rid of melaleuca and Australian pine, originally planted to help control water levels and flooding.
The problem here, I think, is that too often we assume that restoring an ecological area is about the same as cleaning a kitchen -- you pull out some chemicals and some sponges and paper towels or cloths, scrub scrub, put everything away, and voila, you're done and the kitchen is clean in a more or less one step process. Of course, if you're going to use the area again, you need to clean up all over again, something often forgotten in this "it shouldn't take this long to clean the area up."
But the larger problem is that restoration is not the same as cleaning. Everything is out of whack in Lake Apopka -- fish, plants, and most critically, the microorganisms that form the base of the food chain -- and it takes time, more time than I'd like, for all of these critters to find a balance again.
It is true that people are not, for the most part, boating on Lake Apopka -- I've seen more boats on considerably tinier lakes. And that's partly thanks to the lack of fish in the lake and the murkiness of the water - other Florida lakes in the area are filled with crystal clear water. But it's also thanks to something that isn't going to change: the basic shallowness of the lake, which means that although it's a wide lake, you can't put huge boats on it.
Naturally, the town meeting is scheduled during the only thing I have scheduled all week (no, not Downton Abbey) but I may be able to get to the tail end of it, and raise my voice for giving native plants just a little bit longer to try to grow.
I'm not against all non-native species - I do, after all, have roses growing outside my window. But what I am against is the idea of using non-native species as an attempt to solve environmental issues. This almost never goes well, and you can see the results in South Florida, where the state, county governments and private landowners are having to spend millions to attempt to get rid of melaleuca and Australian pine, originally planted to help control water levels and flooding.
The problem here, I think, is that too often we assume that restoring an ecological area is about the same as cleaning a kitchen -- you pull out some chemicals and some sponges and paper towels or cloths, scrub scrub, put everything away, and voila, you're done and the kitchen is clean in a more or less one step process. Of course, if you're going to use the area again, you need to clean up all over again, something often forgotten in this "it shouldn't take this long to clean the area up."
But the larger problem is that restoration is not the same as cleaning. Everything is out of whack in Lake Apopka -- fish, plants, and most critically, the microorganisms that form the base of the food chain -- and it takes time, more time than I'd like, for all of these critters to find a balance again.
It is true that people are not, for the most part, boating on Lake Apopka -- I've seen more boats on considerably tinier lakes. And that's partly thanks to the lack of fish in the lake and the murkiness of the water - other Florida lakes in the area are filled with crystal clear water. But it's also thanks to something that isn't going to change: the basic shallowness of the lake, which means that although it's a wide lake, you can't put huge boats on it.
Naturally, the town meeting is scheduled during the only thing I have scheduled all week (no, not Downton Abbey) but I may be able to get to the tail end of it, and raise my voice for giving native plants just a little bit longer to try to grow.