Here's a local and state news update from Florida Today and WFIT. I'm Evan Niemczyk.
The St. Johns Water Management District has created a Seagrass StoryMap for the Indian River Lagoon. WFIT’s Terri Wright tells us more.
"The new interactive Seagrass StoryMap highlights the recovery of the Indian River Lagoon and the restoration projects driving it. The map explains efforts such as muck removal, wetland restoration, stormwater treatment, and septic-to-sewer conversions that are helping seagrass rebound after pollution-fueled algae blooms destroyed an estimated 75% of the lagoon's seagrass beginning in 2011. New data show the underwater meadows are returning, an important sign of recovery for the lagoon and its wildlife. Although not yet at healthy levels, the map shows cause for cautious optimism."
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is warning SNAP participation is facing its fastest decline in decades.
Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the center says the decline is due to the Republican reconciliation bill enacted last year..
She says shifting SNAP’s administrative costs to the states and penalizing technical errors is leading to harsher cuts in the program.
“The cost shift, although it is not taking place until October 2027, states really didn't have time to make the needed adjustments in a slower pace. So what is happening is they states are concerned about a potential 100 million dollars or more bill that is coming up, and so the only thing they can control is how to make to reduce their errors super quick is to kind of make it really more complicated for families to get on because at the end of the day… if your caseload is smaller, then you're on the hook for less money.”
For Florida this year, that penalty was nearly $1 Billion dollars.
According to Jones, SNAP participation fell by more than four and a half million people nationwide. That’s an 11% drop in just nine months.
The Trump administration recently announced a set of rule changes that will weaken protections under the Endangered Species Act. As Central Florida Public Media’s environment reporter Molly Duerig explains, conservationists are concerned about how the rule changes will affect species of animals — and plants — that are facing extinction.
Already, plants listed under the E-S-A aren’t as well protected as animals.
On private land, animals listed as endangered or threatened are protected from “take”: from being killed, injured or otherwise harassed. Listed plants are not.
“On private property, an endangered plant **is your property. You can do with it as you wish.”
Gene Kelly is with the Florida Native Plant Society. He says, generally, the E-S-A winds up protecting listed plants incidentally: when they co-exist with a listed **animal species relying on the plants for habitat.
“Now habitat isn't protected.”
One of the E-S-A rule changes redefines the word “harm” to **exclude harm to habitat for protected species. Kelly says it stands to destroy the law’s primary way of protecting plants.
The federal government says the rule change slated for September will, quote, “end years of federal overreach” by better protecting private property rights.
Molly Duerig, Central Florida Public Media // In Oakland, I’m Molly Duerig
For these stories and more, visit FloridaToday.com and WFIT.org. I'm Evan Niemczyk