Three months after the governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, had rejected the comprehensive restoration Blueprint for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in state waters, civil servants with NOAA state to completely scrap the original plan.
The final rule of the restoration blueprint is published in January 2025 and represents the highlight of the 14 -year work of the sanctuary and the partner organizations. The revision presented a lengthy change in the sanctuary regulations that started in 2011, a surprising state report, a decline in health of the reefs The keys, seaweed beds and other ecosystems.
The blueprint's regulations came into force on March 5 in federal water. At the end of a 45-day state review period in the same month, a “proposal hammer instead of a scalpel” used in his review of the plan and blocked its implementation in state waters that make up 49% of the area of the sanctuary.
In a letter to US trade minister Howard Lutnick on March 3, Desantis determined problems with the proposed plan, of which most of which was reflected four months earlier in a very elected letter from FWC chairman Rodney Barreto on Sanctuary officials. The most important points included the support of artificial reefs within the protection boundaries, limited method -specific fishing opportunities in protected areas and changes to the language that influence the authority of FWC on fishing regulations.
With Desantis' letter, in waters within three miles to land in the Atlantic and nine miles of the country in the Golf, the regulations are now returning to the rules originally set in 1997.
Immediately after Desantis' rejection, several officials in stakeholder organizations informed that they are confident that a changed design could be submitted for checking after differences were issued with FWC. But until a meeting of the council of the sanctuary on June 17, this option was apparently at the table.
On Tuesday, the reigning superintendent of the sanctuary, David Burke, said faced with three basic options. The blueprint completely withdraw if the department would prevent the plan from reaching its general goals. Or ask public contributions to whether the plan could still be effective in view of the move of Desantis.
He added that the website and the mobile app of the sanctuary reflect the changes to federal waters, the sanctuary has not yet widened over the new rule in order to reflect the new rule.
The implementation of the rule in federal waters was a surprise for many in the room, some of which had told the weekly newspaper after the meeting that they did not know that the blueprint was technically seen.
While the effects in the keys were not as serious as before, said Burke, the federal reductions with the supervisory authorities, budgets, personnel and institutions the future of the blueprose and the sanctuary as a whole in Schweben, with little clarity were made.
When asked whether the sanctuary could meet the 10 requirements for the implementation of the blossom in state waters, Burke said the decision was “binary”.
“The governor certified it in state waters as not acceptable – that is the end,” he said. “We either have the current game state with two rules or back until 1997.”
“It is an absolute shame that this is the position in which we are in ourselves,” said Ben Daughtry, chairman of the advice council for Sanctuary. “But here we are with everything that is going on.”
Burke later spoke to The Weekly on the same day on the same day and said again that “we do not go back in our interpretation and adapt the rule and try to put it over the finish line again”, especially with the existing federal rule.
Maintaining the separation between the waters of the federal government and the country would represent a discouraging series of challenges, which makes the cancellation of the rule a real possibility.
“It will not be a small technical series of challenges – we have two different definitions for all different zones and what they mean,” he said. “We have different rules in different protected areas for protected areas, some of which are not anchored, some of them, some of which allow fishing, some of which do not do.
When asked why the hope of a new negotiation in March was apparently evaporating, Burke said that the sanctuary “continues to have good work relationships with our colleagues in the state”, but the idea of a changed blueprint “could have been a perspective that had one party, and the other not.”
“It didn't take long on the main page to say:” Okay, now what? “, He said.” We didn't think this was the next step in an ongoing trial. It is not really the end, it is the end to do it through recovery planning.
“There is a broad recognition that the legacy rules were not sufficient for the protection of the environment,” concluded Burke. “Everyone realizes that something still has to be done, but it remains to be seen whether the restoration planning is.”
While the process for installing new rules in the future would hopefully follow a shorter time frame than the comprehensive blueprint, the officials of the Sanctuary of the Weekly Ordinance said that a new regulation would follow the same review steps, with at least four years.