Marsha Kearney, Supervisor
National Forests in Florida
325 John Knox Road, Bldg. F-100
Tallahassee, FL 32303
Fax: 850-523-8505

Dear Marsha,

On Saturday, 15 June, as I drove down L. L. Wallace Road to check on some of my study ponds for the Striped Newt and Gopher Frog, I was nearly run off the road by a continual string of dump trucks hauling clay. Today, with a few phone calls, I discovered that Leon County is in the process of ìimprovingî L. L. Wallace Road with open-grade cold mix (OGCM). For the wildlife of the Apalachicola National Forest, including rare and threatened species, this is a potential disaster.

What is happening here? I have not seen any mention of this project in any of the notifications I receive from the Forest Service. Road construction engineers have told me that OGCM is virtually the same thing as pavement; the major difference is that OGCM is slightly more permeable to water. Where was the NEPA process in this case? I am unaware of any valid reasons why the Forest Service should be allowing Leon County to pave L. L. Wallace Road, or any ANF road for that matter. This action seems totally contrary to the ANF 10-year Plan.

Moreover, since I have been conducting ecological research on the use of the uplands and some 275 ponds on both sides of L. L. Wallace Road (AND the U. S. Forest Service has supported my studies financially) I am baffled as to why I was not consulted or even notified about this operation, which could have drastic ecological consequences.

There are many good reasons why L. L. Wallace Road should not be improved in this way (or with any sort of modifications to the road surface that would increase traffic). To begin with, I do not see the justification in the first place. There are a few private landholders at the east end of L. L. Wallace Road, but the land bordering L. L. Wallace Road all the way to Springhill Road belongs to the U. S. Forest Service. There are no private landholders living at the west end of L. L. Wallace Road who might be served by any ìimprovements.î Paving L. L. Wallace Road with OGCM will make a throughfare that will unnecessarily increase traffic and the speed of vehicles and serve no public interest.

Ecologically, there are many reasons why this road should be left in its present unimproved state. A few of the more important of these are: Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis), Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus), Pine Snake (Pituophis melanoleucus), Gopher Frog (Rana capito), Striped Newt (Notophthalmus perstriatus), Southern Hognose Snake (Heterodon simus), Indigo Snake (Drymarchon corais), and Wood Stork (Mycteria americana). The same holds true for all the more common mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles that utilize the surrounding uplands and wetlands of the small and ecologically important physiographic region known as the Munson Sandhills, through which L. L. Wallace Road runs.

I am not a Red-cockaded Woodpecker nor Wood Stork expert, but I have done much ecological field research on all of the amphibians and reptiles in the Munson Sandhills and I can speak to the direct effects that paving L. L. Wallace Road would have on them.

First and foremost of the impacts is habitat fragmentation and reduction of gene flow among fragmented populations. Many studies throughout the world have shown that roads have a strongly deleterious effect on vertebrate populations (Evink et al. 1996, 1998; Evink et al. 1999). It has already been shown that U. S. Highway 319, from which L. L. Wallace Road runs to the west, has a negative impact on 26 species of amphibians and reptiles utilizing a small temporary pond adjacent to the highway (Means 1996, 1999). The application of OGCM on L. L. Wallace Road would create additional problems for these species and further fragment what little native sandhill habitat is left in north Florida.

The Munson Sandhills on both sides of L. L. Wallace Road supports valuable breeding populations of the Striped Newt and Gopher Frog, both of which are considered species of concern by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and are under study to determine if they should be given candidate status (Linda LaClaire, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, pers. comm.). The Gopher Frog is considered a Florida threatened species (Godley 1992) and the Striped Newt, rare (Christman and Means 1992). Likewise, the Gopher Tortoise, Indigo Snake, Pine Snake, and Southern Hognose Snake are in trouble from habitat fragmentation and highway mortality (Gibbons et al. 2000), and their plight too, has been recognized by threatened or declining status (Diemer 1992, Franz 1992, Tuberville et al. 2000).

All of these animals are native and restricted to the now rare longleaf pine sandhills ecosystem that is preserved in the Munson Sandhills. Longleaf pine forest once accounted for about 60% of the landscape in the Coastal Plain from Virginia to east Texas, but has been reduced to less than 2% of its original extent (Means 1996 b, c; Platt 1999). These animals are declining because their habitat has already been urbanized or converted to agriculture, silviculture, and other non-native situations in which they canít live. Furthermore, the species are rare on the Apalachicola National Forest because sandhills habitats are naturally rare there. The Striped Newt, for instance, is not found anywhere else on the ANF except in the Munson Sandhills. Similarly, the Gopher Frog, Pine Snake, and Southern Hognose Snake are found more or less exclusively there and the Munson Sandhills is one of the best remaining areas for the Gopher Tortoise.

My studies in the past six years have documented that between 9 and 20 breeding ponds of the Striped Newt in the Munson Sandhills is the largest metapopulation of the species left in its entire global range (Means 2001). L. L. Wallace Road cuts off one of the speciesí most important breeding ponds from those to the northeast. Increased traffic and alien substrate such as open-grade coal mix would further fragment the sensitive habitat these species need and prevent gene flow because of increased traffic-caused mortality on migrating individuals and reluctance of individuals to attempt to cross a wide, unfamiliar substrate. The same problems are posed for the Gopher Frog, Gopher Tortoise, Indigo Snake, Pine Snake, and Southern Hognose Snake.

Marsha, the Apalachicola National Forest is one of the last and best remaining examples of native Coastal Plain habitats to be found anywhere from east Texas to Virginia, let alone Florida. Witness the fact that the ANF is home to the worldís largest and most thriving population of the federally endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker. The ANF also supports the largest population of the federally threatened flatwoods salamander. If national politics had not slowed up the listing process, Iím fully confident that the Striped Newt would rapidly become one of our next federally threatened species, and the ANF would be recognized as supporting its most important remaining metapopulation. The Forest Service should take a pro-active stance in protecting the Striped Newt before actions on the Apalachicola National Forest contribute to its further decline.

Because the OGCM process is already underway on L. L. Wallace Road, I am frantic to try to stop it. I implore you to invoke whatever powers you have to stop the open-grade cold mix ìimprovementsî now underway on L. L. Wallace Road. I stand ready to assist you in any way that I can.

Sincerely yours,

D. Bruce Means, PhD
President and Executive Director

Cc: <--! EDITORS NOTE: names removed for privacy -->

Literature Cited

Christman, S. P. and D. B. Means. 1992. Rare Striped Newt. Pages 62-65 in P. E. Moler, ed. Volume III. Amphibians and reptiles; Rare and endangered biota of Florida. Univ. Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Diemer, J. 1992. Threatened Gopher Tortoise. Pages 123-127 in P. E. Moler, ed. Volume III. Amphibians and reptiles; Rare and endangered biota of Florida. Univ. Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Evink, G. L., P. Garrett, D. Ziegler, and J. Berry, eds. 1996. Trends addressing transportation related wildlife mortality; Proceedings of the transportation related wildlife mortality seminar. Publication FL-ER-58-96, Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, Florida.

Evink, G. L., P. Garrett, D. Ziegler, and J. Berry, eds. 1998. Proceedings of the international conference on wildlife and transportation. Publication FL-ER-69-98, Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, Florida.

Evink, G. L., P. Garrett, and D. Ziegler, eds. 1999. Proceedings of the third international conference on wildlife and transportation. Publication FL-ER-73-99, Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, Florida.

Franz, R. 1992. Species of special concern Pine Snake. Pages 254-258 in P. E. Moler, ed. Volume III. Amphibians and reptiles; Rare and endangered biota of Florida. Univ. Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Gibbons, J. W., D. E. Scott, T. J. Ryan, K. A. Buhlmann, T. D. Tuberville, B. S. Metts, J. L. Greene, T. Mills, Y. Leiden, S. Poppy, and C. T. Winne. 2000. The global decline or reptiles, dÈj‡ vu amphibians. BioScience 50(8):653-666.

Godley, J. S. 1992. Threatened Gopher Frog. Pages 15-19 in P. E. Moler, ed. Volume III. Amphibians and reptiles, rare and endangered biota of Florida. Univ. Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Means, D. B. 1996a. A preliminary consideration of highway impacts on herpetofauna inhabiting small isolated wetlands in the southeastern U. S. Coastal Plain. In G. L. Evink, P. Garrett, D. Ziegler, and J. Berry, eds. 1996. Trends addressing transportation related wildlife mortality; Proceedings of the transportation related wildlife mortality seminar. Publication FL-ER-58-96, Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, Florida.

Means, D. B. 1996b. Chapter 15. Longleaf pine forest, going, going.... Pages 210-229 in Mary Byrd Davis, ed. Eastern old-growth forest: Prospects for rediscovery and recovery. Island Press, Washington, D. C.

Means, D. B. 1996c. Longleaf pine forest: importance to biodiversity. Pages 12-14 in J. S. Kush, ed. Longleaf pine: A regional perspective of challenges and opportunities. Proceedings of the first longleaf alliance conference, Mobile, AL.

Means, D. B. 1999. The effects of highway mortality on four species of amphibians at a small, temporary pond in northern Florida. Pages 125-128 in G. L. Evink , P. Garrett, and D. Ziegler, eds. 1999. Proceedings of the third international conference on wildlife and transportation. Publication FL-ER-73-99, Florida Department of Transportation, Tallahassee, Florida.

Means, D. B. 2001. Reducing impacts on rare vertebrates that require small isolated water bodies along U. S. Highway 319. Final Report to the Florida Department of Transportation. 148 pages. September 2001.

Platt, W. J. 1999. Southeastern pine savannas. Pages 23-38 in R. C. Anderson, J. S. Fralish, and J. M. Baskin, eds. Savannas, Barrens, and Rock Outcrop Plant Communities of North America. Cambridge Univ. Press, New York.

Tuberville, T. D., J. R. Bodie, J. B. Jensen, L. V. LaClaire, J.W. Gibbons. 2000. Apparent decline of the Southern Hognose Snake (Heterodon simus). Journal of theElisha Mitchell Scientific Society 116(1):19-40.