Santa Rosa County has set aside over $100,000 in funding to remove gopher tortoises found at the site of a major drainage project on Pine Blossom Road north of Milton.
Construction is now on hold, pending completion of the removal project, which could begin this week.
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A few years in the making to address flooding and erosion issues, the Pine Blossom Road Drainage Project was just getting started.
Santa Rosa commissioners awarded a $5.2 million contract for the drainage project in February. Materials were staged at the site, and contractor Bear Construction kicked off the construction project in early July.
“We were notifying residents that we have a drainage easement behind their house and we were notifying them that we would be back there starting construction and one of them notified us to the presence of gopher tortoise, which is a protected species,” said John Studstill, assistant county engineer, noting that the project hit a snag pretty early on. “When we found that out, we told the contractor to stand down.”
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Immediately, the multi-million dollar drainage project was halted, while the county began to coordinate the process of getting the tortoises relocated, beginning with an initial survey.
“We had somebody go out and take a look,” Studstill said. “They were not a trained person, but just to kind of get a feel for what we were looking at, and they found seven holes that looked like gopher tortoise burrows.”
At this point, because the gopher tortoise is a State-designated Threatened species in Florida, it was necessary to turn to the professionals. A licensed Gopher Tortoise Agent from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) was contacted to provide a quote for a survey and relocation based on those seven holes. Last week, commissioners approved a contract with engineering firm Volkert, Inc. to oversee the process.
According to Studstill, the budget for the removal project includes funding for an FWC permit to relocate as many as ten tortoises.
“The change order, as presented, is what we feel like is a worst-case scenario,” he said. “I don’t expect that we’ll be using the full $102,000. But we’ll know more after we have the survey.”
Once the permit is secured and the gopher tortoise burrow survey is completed, there are two different types of authorized retrieval.
“Some that are located in an open area, we can excavate and retrieve those tortoises. And others around fence lines, in backyards and things like that, we’ll have to trap, and that is a little more labor intensive,” Studstill stated.
That process requires setting traps and monitoring twice a day for up to 28 days, which means the Pine Blossom Road drainage project could be delayed for about a month.
“If you set the trap and go out there and you get one in three days, then that’s going to be less expensive than having to monitor it for 28 days," added Studstill. "If we monitor it for 28 days and there’s no tortoise trapped, then we assume that the burrow is not active.”
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On the other hand, Studstill says, if it’s just a case of excavation with a backhoe, the entire removal process could be completed in just a couple of weeks. Afterward, the area will be cordoned off with silt fencing to keep other tortoises out of the work area.
Once the gopher tortoises are removed, they’ll be transported to a permitted recipient site, which becomes their new habitat.
“They’re licensed with FWC, and it’s people or companies that own property that have designated it for conservation and gone through the FWC permitting processes,” Studstill explained. “So, they get them and just ship them there. “
With state protections and a Gopher Tortoise Management Plan aimed at improving the conservation status of the species, Studstill acknowledges that properly handling is serious business.
“If we were to go forward without getting this, and somebody caught wind of it and reported us, that would be some pretty major fines, I think, that we would be facing,” he cautioned.
While the required gopher tortoise removal is important, it’s not uncommon. Studstill said the county encountered similar issues during recent county work on Randy Brown Road and during construction of the Pea Ridge Connector, which opened in 2023.
