Panther advocates speak out against Kingston development plans

A planned east Lee County housing development of about 10,000 homes called Kingston to be built over the next two decades on a former citrus farm will cause a collision between human habitat and panther habitat, a group of environmental activists said.

The gathering and news conference, organized by Sierra Club, took place Jan. 16 at the East Regional Library in Lehigh Acres, less than 10 miles west of the 6,676 acres that will comprise the subdivision planned by Cameratta Cos.

The development will be on land between Corkscrew Road, east of Estero, and State Road 82, with a planned new north-south road to be paid for by the developer as part of the project.

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Almost a dozen speakers participated and expressed their dismay with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in approving the development to proceed in its next steps after releasing a study that about 23 panthers could die during the construction periods and about 22 per year, every year thereafter.

Estimates by the National Wildlife Federation put the current Florida panther population at a little more than 200.

The public comment period began Jan. 16 and will end Jan. 23, with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection gathering public comment and feedback on the project. That feedback will be compiled into a report that will be sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said Alexandra Kuchta, a spokesperson for the DEP.

“This is an opportunity for concerned citizens to speak with us one-on-one,” she said.

The citizens’ top two concerns were further endangering the Florida panther with the coming sprawl and paving over what had been part of the Density Reduction/Groundwater Recharge area, which was formed in the 1980s to protect against sprawl and to protect the integrity of the area’s freshwater supply. That area changed beginning in 2015, as the Lee County Board of Commissioners allowed for increased density.

“We believe that this level of take will bring about the extinction of the Florida panther,” said Julianne Thomas of Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

Nearby resident Marsha Ellis said, “It is a crushing of our soul in the core panther habitat and breeding area.”

Elise Bennett, the Florida director for the Center of Biological Diversity said, “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has to date has failed to meet its core mission, which is to ensure that species will not be prevented from surviving and recovering.”

Ray Blacksmith, president of Cameratta Cos., said Kingston would preserve 60% of the land and restore historic water flow-ways. He said the conservation efforts would benefit the remaining panther population.

“We’re cognizant of the fact of where this project is located. But we’ve developed a template to do environmental restoration with a residential component,” Blacksmith said. “And the residential component is the funding mechanism to pay for the environmental work that we’re going to do.”

Blacksmith said 3,273.62 acres would be set aside for conservation and almost 2,000 acres of current agricultural lands would be converted to native habitats. He shared a document stating 447.33 acres of wetland flow-ways would be restored from agricultural lands and will provide significant foraging habitat for wetland-dependent wildlife and regional water quality benefits.

Blacksmith said panthers already have threats against them that are unrelated to the Kingston development. “Traffic impacts is going to impact the panthers,” he said. “But so does panther-on-panther kills and feline leukemia is also a cause of panther deaths.”

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Despite the conservational plan shared by the developer, the concerned residents and environmental activists said this wasn’t an area or an issue on which they could compromise, not with the future of the panther at stake.

“How can we have goals of recovery when we’re destroying the core habitat of the panther?” said Patty Whitehead, a concerned resident. “This is the core habitat of the panther. And if you take it away, you don’t have any panthers.”

This story is a repost from Gulfshorebusiness.com.