A Backcountry Access Plan for Big Cypress National Preserve does not recommend any official wilderness/NPS file

The National Park Service, although identifying more than 190,000 acres that would qualify as official wilderness at Big Cypress National Preserve, has passed on recommending any of it for official wilderness in its Backcountry Access Plan.

The nearly 400-page document that considers four alternatives for managing that access settles on one calling for slight increases in the number of off-road vehicle miles in the nearly 730,000-acre preserve that adjoins Everglades National Park in South Florida, and calls for a slight realignment of the Florida National Scenic Trail. Official wilderness is not recommended, though, because of opposition from the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes and the need for the Park Service to have access for management purposes.

The preserve's landscape is part of the tribes' "homelands and ... under the preserve’s enabling legislation [the tribes] are entitled to co-management consideration and enjoy 'usual and customary use and occupancy of federal or federally acquired lands and waters within the preserve and the Addition, including hunting, fishing, and trapping on a subsistence basis and traditional tribal ceremonials,'” park spokesperson Scott Pardue told the Traveler in an email late last week.

"The tribes' largest concern was that a wilderness proposal would risk the exclusion of tribal members from accessing ceremonial grounds and sacred sites on wilderness lands by motorized means," he added.

Pardue said preserve staff opposed wilderness designation because of "the need to routinely access and/or take management actions on wilderness eligible lands for resource management purposes, such as wildland and prescribed fire, invasive species management, and ecological restoration, including future manipulations to restore a more naturally functioning hydrologic regime, which were also concerns expressed by those opposed to wilderness designation."

Everglades National Park has the largest official wilderness east of the Rocky Mountains, the nearly 1.3-million-acre Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness that was designated in 1978.

"We’re extremely disappointed that, in its final decision on this topic, NPS decided not to designate any of the wilderness it found in its assessment for eventual inclusion into the National Wilderness System," Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association, said in an email. "Opponents of wilderness have focused only on what you can’t do in a designated wilderness.  Mainly that means the use of motorized recreation.  What wilderness does accomplish is the preservation of intact natural areas for the benefit of rare plants and wildlife, many that are state and federally listed as threatened and endangered. It also offers an unparalleled outdoors experience for the many visitors who appreciate a vision of nature as it was."

He added that the Park Service "has decades of management of motorized recreation in the wetlands of the Big Cypress — and is aware of the effects of what the agency itself calls a 'high-impact' recreational activity. Those include noise, pollution, rutting and erosion of soils, disturbances to wildlife, and the transport of invasive plant species throughout the preserve."

In its preferred alternative, which will be adopted after 30 days of public review, the Park Service calls for the reopening of 15 miles of primary off-road-vehicle trails and of 39 miles of airboat trails, bringing to 331 miles the combined total mileage of primary ORV and airboat trails in Big Cypress. In addition, 53 miles of secondary ORV trails would be added. Secondary trails are out-and-back trails that veer off from a primary trail to reach a specific backcountry destination.

The 15 additional miles of primary trails would be distributed among the Bear Island Unit, the Corn Dance Unit and Northeast Addition, the Corn Dance Unit east of Raccoon Point, and the Turner River Unit. The 39 miles of reopened airboat trail would be in the Stairsteps Unit Zones 3 and 4.

According to the final document, the preferred approach "would expand the preserve's trail systems, and the consequent visitor use, while avoiding impacts on 99.9 percent of the preserve."

In decades past there had been more than 23,300 dispersed miles of ORV routes in Big Cypress. In 2000, a plan adopted by the Park Service whittled that down to 400 miles of designated trails.

The preferred plan also calls for an additional 114 miles of hiking trails, bringing the preserve's total to 141 miles (not counting 44 miles of the Florida National Scenic Trail), and 87 new backcountry destinations for camping that would "augment 24 existing backcountry campsites across the preserve, two existing backcountry campgrounds in the Bear Island Unit, and two primitive group camping areas along the Florida National Scenic Trail."

The document does note that the preferred alternative would "affect" nearly 800 acres of Florida panther habitat. It adds, though, that "large expanses of suitable habitat would remain available for panthers and their prey populations in the preserve, and the NPS would implement adaptive closures if visitor use interfered with known den sites."

The Florida panther long has been designated an endangered species, with no officially designated critical habitat.

The preferred alternative also would "adversely affect 5.23 acres of red-cockaded woodpecker habitat in the preserve; nearly double other alternatives but still representing less than 0.5 percent of suitable habitat" for the species, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.