Groups Call On Interior Secretary To Block Oil Drilling At Big Cypress

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is being urged by more than 100 groups and organizations to block efforts to drill for oil in Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida because of the negative impacts that could pose to the Everglades ecosystem.

The groups, in a letter sent Tuesday to the new secretary, said drilling for oil also would run counter to President Biden's pledge to fight climate change and conserve 30 percent of the country's lands and waters for nature by 2030.

“Drilling for filthy fossil fuels in this wild landscape is not in the public’s interests,” said Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need to protect and restore the Everglades, not sacrifice what’s left of it to prop up a dying industry that continues to fuel catastrophic global warming.”

Drilling at Big Cypress is possible because the federal government owns only the surface rights, while the mineral rights are privately owned by Collier Resources Co. Towards the end of the 20th century and early in the 21st the Interior Department made efforts to purchase the mineral rights from the Collier family, which became Florida’s largest landowner and developer after patriarch Barron Collier and his wife settled in the Fort Myers area in 1911.

Late in President Clinton's second term and again during the first term of President George W. Bush the Interior Department considered buying the mineral rights, but the effort proved impossible to reach a fair market value that all parties agreed upon. Estimates ranged from $472.5 million, a figure provided by Collier Resource Company’s consulting geologist, down to nothing.

In the end, Congress refused to fund a $120 million deal, which the Inspector General maintained was wrongly tilted in favor of the company. At the time, and in light of Office of Inspect General's findings, there was some speculation that Collier, which hired Burnett Oil Co. to search for recoverable oil deposits, had only been pushing for the exploration permit to build overwhelming momentum and public pressure on Congress to acquire the mineral rights.

Field research Burnett did in 2017 and 2018 to see if there were economically recoverable oil deposits beneath the eastern half of the 720,000-acre preserve left the landscape crisscrossed in places by tracks left by “vibroseis” trucks that can weigh 30 tons; that was despite National Park Service permit requirements that the surface impacts essentially be erased on a daily basis.

Early this year Burnett submitted permit applications to both the state of Florida and the Park Service to develop two well pads, one along Interstate 75 between Fort Launderdale and Naples and another a bit north of U.S. 41 where Collier, Broward and Miami-Dade counties meet, from which horizontal drilling could be conducted. Along with opposition from many conservation groups, the project has been questioned by the Miccosukee Tribe because of cultural sites that could be impacted, as well as from possible environmental damages.

“People don’t come to a national park to see oil wells. The constant threat of oil and gas exploration in Big Cypress National Preserve jeopardizes the sensitive habitat this park provides for endangered species like the Florida Panther, as well as the one-of-a-kind park experience Big Cypress offers to so many visitors,” said Cara Capp, senior Everglades program manager for National Parks Conservation Association. “Big Cypress should not be for sale. We are calling on Secretary Deb Haaland to affirm the Biden administration’s commitment to protecting all our public lands, including Big Cypress, from harmful fossil fuel development.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, Conservancy of Southwest Florida, National Parks Conservation Association and Natural Resources Defense Council have opposed Burnett Oil Company’s oil and gas activities in the preserve since it began exploration in 2017 and have documented the severe impacts and lasting damages caused by operating heavy machinery in the ecosystem that can still be seen today.

At risk from drilling is an ecosystem with rare woodpeckers that live in family groups, with youngsters helping to raise their siblings. The preserve holds vital habitat for the Florida panther, listed as an endangered species more than five decades ago, that has tenaciously survived despite the steady urbanization of Florida. More than 30 species of orchids grow in Big Cypress, perhaps most notable among them the ghost orchid that snakes its roots around the trunk of its host tree, anchoring its beautiful flowers. And there is the Everglades dwarf siren, a curious, bushy-gilled salamander that can grow up to 10 inches long.

Wood storks, an endangered species, have habitat in Big Cypress, as do the red-cockaded woodpecker (endangered), the Everglade snail kite (endangered), Audubon’s Crested Caracara (threatened), the Eastern Indigo snake (threatened), and the American alligator (threatened). The preserve also provides important habitat to numerous other rare and federally endangered species of plants, birds, bats, and butterflies. The state of Florida, meanwhile, lists nearly 70 plant species within Big Cypress as endangered, and if you include threatened species, the state’s tally reaches 100 for the preserve.