The storms did a number on mangrove forests, which protect much of Sarasota Bay in Manatee County. One of the most-protected sites saw nearly half the mangroves destroyed, including huge old-growth trees snapped in half by hurricane winds.
The survey came during the second year of the Mangrove Ranger program, which is conducted by Sarasota Waterkeeper. The nonprofit environmental advocacy group has estimated 90% of the mangroves in Sarasota County have been wiped out, so they're concentrating their preservation efforts on the northern part of the bay.
Abbey Tyrna is executive director of Sarasota Waterkeeper.
"If it wasn't the mangroves that bore the brunt of the wind from our hurricane season, then it would have been our homes," she said. "And so I think it's really important for people to recognize that they're there to bear the brunt. They are nature's fence. They are nature's buffer. Their nature's whatever you want to call it, protector for human assets that would otherwise be destroyed."
Tyrna says not all the sites she mapped lost trees, a development she said was interesting.
"Like you see it on the news, right there'll be a particular neighborhood that was hit harder than a neighborhood that's adjacent to it, or even, on the same street, some houses will be worse off than other houses. And I guess we're seeing the same thing with mangrove forest," she said. "So we had two sites that are really right next to each other. And one site saw a small loss, and the other site saw a huge loss of 46% of its canopy cover. And when we went out there to investigate, there was just these huge old-growth trees that had just fallen over, cracked in half."
But she says the decline in some areas shows more intense hurricanes are yet another threat to mangroves, on top of rising seas and loss of habitat.
She said the situation could be made worse by state oversight that is preventing local governments from toughening some environmental constraints on new development.
An example of this came last week, when Manatee County commissioners were supposed to vote on restoring wetland buffers that had been overturned by a previous board.
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But they postponed the vote out of fear of being targeted by Gov. DeSantis. The project could violate new state laws preventing hurricane-impacted local governments from approving policies for one year, which makes it harder to rebuild.
Tyrna said this in particular could affect the old-growth mangrove stand in Sarasota Bay, where last year's hurricanes killed nearly half the trees. A proposed development backing up to the trees would leave them little room to migrate if rising seas start to overtake their habitat.
"If development is approved with minimal or no buffer, then we're going to see this area not only have loss from future hurricanes, but then loss from the development without any buffer," she said.
On a positive note, she said a grant from the Barancik Foundation will allow the Mangrove Rangers to continue for several more years. Tyrna said they're looking to expand their research south into Sarasota County, into Roberts Bay and Lemon Bay.
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