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Anglers
fear loss of canal access
Many anglers worry that a
plan to help revive the Everglades may cost them South
Florida's best bass fishing grounds -- the canals of west
Broward and Miami-Dade.
BY CURTIS MORGAN
Canals have done a lot of damage to the Everglades over the
decades, draining vast acres and altering the course of the
River of Grass.
But at least one Glades denizen has made itself fat and
happy in the canals crisscrossing South Florida: the
largemouth bass, the most passionately pursued fish on the
planet. They've adapted so well, in fact, that the canals of
western Broward and Miami-Dade rank as the richest bass
waters south of Lake Okeechobee. ''This is a great
fishery,'' said biologist Jon Fury, who tracks bass
statistics for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission.
It's also a fishery facing an uncertain future. The threat
isn't from pollution, development or people dangling plastic
worms. It's from the $8 billion Everglades restoration
effort. Some major canals are scheduled to go along with
levees, bridges and other man-made obstacles impeding the
system's slow, shallow flow.
A group called South Florida Anglers for Everglades
Restoration (SAFER) is pushing to preserve the canals and,
they say, public access to fish them. ''There are thousands
of fishermen that would be hurt by this,'' said Al Ovies,
president of the group, a coalition of bass angling clubs
from three counties that held its third annual ''Save Our
Canals'' fishing tournament and fundraiser last week at
Everglades Holiday Park, west of Davie. ''We're all for
restoration,'' Ovies said. ``What we're not in favor of [is]
backfilling the canals, especially with the lack of
scientific evidence for the need.''
GARNERING SUPPORT
The group has won some important support from Florida's
wildlife agency, which opposes backfilling -- at least until
alternatives are better studied. The loss of some canals may
be inevitable, Fury agreed, but ''all the SAFER folks are
saying is before you do this, show us that it is absolutely
necessary. Don't just do it for aesthetic reasons,'' he
said.
While no decisions have been made, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, the agency designing the projects, says it's
listening. ''This group has organized and asked a lot of
questions and we're trying to answer them,'' said Kim
Taplin, a Corps regional project manager who fished the
tournament at the club's invitation to get an anglers' view
of things. The agency has agreed to analyze options for the
first canals in the bull's-eye -- the L-67s, heavily fished
parallel canals that stretch 25 miles from Central Broward
to the Tamiami Trail. The first computer modeling results
could be ready as early as June.
The overhaul of the L-67s is part of the long delayed
Modified Water Delivery Project, approved in 1989 to help
revive the parched eastern side of Everglades National Park.
Combined with a proposed 3,000-foot bridge along Tamiami
Trail, it's intended to open up the dam of canals, roads and
levees that have long strangled Shark River Slough, the
historic headwaters of the park.
BLOCKING ACCESS
The blueprint calls for cutting three openings in the levee
along an eight-mile section of the L-67A, then possibly
refilling an adjacent section of the L-67C. Boat channels
are planned for the L-67A but the plan now would cut off as
much as 17 miles of the L-67C to boaters.
Ovies and other anglers argue that canals aren't a
significant problem. The historic flow, they say, could be
largely restored simply by yanking out old above-ground
barriers like levees and roads and plugging the canals to
prevent water movement.
Taplin said engineers are looking at all the options. But
she also cautioned that while the analyses aren't done,
''engineering 101'' suggests trenches in the flat landscape
of the Everglades can't help but alter water flow. ''Those
canals were put there for a reason,'' she said.
For bass anglers, the L-67 project, not expected to start
until 2005, is only the first of what could be years of
battles. Future restoration projects target dozens of miles
of areas fished for 40 years, including much of both L-67
canals and levees, the L-29 canal and levee along the
Tamiami as well as sections of the C-111 in South
Miami-Dade.
Fishermen fear losing the L-67s would set a precedent that
could cripple a thriving freshwater fishing industry. The
average bass boat runs some $30,000 and a study Fury
conducted three years ago showed anglers shelled out over
$1.1 million fishing just part of L-67A over six months.
''We really need to get a handle on the economic impacts,''
said Noreen Clough, conservation director for the Bass
Anglers Sports Society, an influential national group that
has waded into the canal issue. ``You take away these places
to fish and they're not going to fish.''
Wildlife commission chairman Rodney Barreto, a Miami
lobbyist who pulled out some lunkers himself as a tournament
guest, has pledged to order up a staff report. ''They've got
to raise the bar a little bit here,'' he said. ``If they
start shutting those canals down, they could shut Holiday
Park down.''
Environmentalists are sympathetic but skeptical. John
Adornato, regional representative for the National Parks
Conservation Association, said everything that makes them so
productive also makes them problematic: They cut through
open marsh. That makes a healthy habitat, allowing bass to
disperse and forage during high water. It also makes for a
rich fishery, concentrating bass in the deeper canals when
water levels fall during dry season. But along with bass,
those canals also collect water that would otherwise flow in
a shallow sheet through the sawgrass marsh, he said. ''The
canals dry out the surrounding marsh, especially in the dry
season, and send it where it shouldn't go,'' he said.
THE `BIGGER PICTURE'
Bass anglers, he said, also are ignoring the bigger fishing
picture. The restoration should help revive Florida and
Biscayne Bay and be a boon for salt-water fishing that make
the bucks spent on bass in Broward and Miami-Dade look like
a drop in the bucket.
Rick Cook, spokesman for Everglades National Park, said
breaching the L-67s has been in the plans since the 1990s.
The park is open to innovative solutions, he said, but not
at the expense of the ecosystem. ''To the extent we can
address their concerns and not compromise park restoration,
I think we're willing to do that,'' he said. ``But the
bottom line is really restoring hydrology through the Shark
River Slough.'' |
