Heritage - Responsible Resource Use

Resource IconResource extraction is the practice of locating, acquiring and selling natural resources. In the case of the Nature Coast, the primary concerns surround the impacts of logging and mining.

Mining

Most folks don't think of Florida as a mining state. The reality is that Florida has significant, and environmentally destructive, mining activities across the state that include phosphate, sand, and limerock mines.

Everything from surface habitats of wetlands and coastal hammocks to the very underground aquifer that supplies our drinking water can be forever altered by mining. Coastal ecosystems receive the runoff from mines, as well as have to suffer from reduced flows of freshwater to the coast. Ripping the earth asunder with draglines and dredges to produce mined materials to build more roads is a recipe for disaster and should not be the future of the Nature Coast.

The Nature Coast, due to the geology of its lands, is attractive to all types of mining, and each leaves a scarred and altered landscape. Proposed megamines like the Tarmac Limerock/Aggragate Mine in coastal Levy County exemplify the risk and environmental dangers such projects pose.* As the phosphate industry exhausts the resources of central and southwest Florida, they are turning to the Nature Coast, where companies own thousands of acres of mineral rights for phosphate in the Suwannee River watershed. Mining for sand and gravel could be an expanding threat, as exemplified as a project proposed for the Green Swamp.

Logging

Silviculture and logging have long been a part of the Nature Coast. Sustainable harvest of trees can be a part of the future of the Nature Coast, but pressure to convert public lands to tree farms is an ongoing threat. Logging for restoration purposes (logging out slash pines for long leaf pines) makes sense, but has to be done in a way that does as little harm to the ecosystem as possible. Logging on private lands has to be done in conjunction with stronger environmental standards and enforcement of those standards.

One mounting and pressing threat to the Nature Coast is the logging of cypress forests and wetlands to produce cypress mulch. Taking mature cypress forests and grinding them into cheap mulch is unacceptable. Several organizations, including the Save Our Cypress Coalition, are working to convince Wal-Mart, Lowes, and Home Depot to stop selling cypress mulch to lesson demand. Excellent environmentally sustainable alternatives exist to cypress mulch, and cypress swamps and wetlands are critical ecosystems in the Nature Coast.

Resources

  • Resource One
  • Resource Two [PDF]
  • Resource Three (fourth paragraph down)
Zamora Buckeye Pulp Mill Case studies of toxicity, like the Buckeye Pulp Mill in Taylor County, provide hard lessons on the cost of resource extraction “as usual.” We must insist upon sustainable, clean practices in all industries, or our ecosystems will continue to pay the price.