editor’s letter
ROOM TO THRIVE
People and creatures are engaged in a space race
16
June-July 2021
EMERALDCOASTMAGA ZINE.COM
People, too, are on the move. Tourism subsided not for long in Florida, given Gov. Ron DeSantis’ approach to COVID-19. Emerald Coast beaches were closed for but a short while, certainly not long enough for leatherbacks to nest in peace. The tourist mix may have changed such that it has been dominated more so by rubber-tire travelers, but the numbers have been strong, and when Spring Break arrived, roadways were stuffed. A drive along U.S. 98 from Panama City to Destin came to require patience, resolve, a sense of humor, survival instincts, an appetite for slowmoving adventure and 30 more minutes than you thought it was going to take. In a few words, developer Peter Bos advises folks to get used to it. Bos, whose projects included the making of Sandestin in the late 1970s, concedes that traffic jams will be unavoidable given our area’s popularity and barriers to roadbuilding, including geography, military installations and other public lands. Increasingly, he predicts, properties in the accommodations business will struggle unless they offer activities and amenities such that guests can substantially avoid the need to get back in their cars after they arrive. Accordingly, Bos, 74, has on the drawing boards a new project that will be as complete and diverse and entertaining as, say, Sandestin. In broad hints given me during a conversation in March, he said that the new development will present a “new residential environment and tourist attraction.” He anticipates that properties along the coast will be consolidated to bring about more developments of the type he has in mind. “I won’t be around for all of them, but they’re coming,” he said.
Keeping to an amusing enclave is one way to beat the traffic. Taking to the water is another. Bos, who has a knack for such things, is in the marina and boat storage business at the right time. To his dry storage facility in Destin, he is adding four more — in Gulf Shores, Alabama; Stuart, Florida; and two in the Bahamas. The pandemic has led to a greater appreciation among people for private spaces that they can control. And, when trapped aboard boats, people resort to behaviors often neglected — like conversation. The black-bellied whistling duck is new to our area. Its historic range includes Mexico and the Caribbean. Not much hunted, it has not learned to fear humans and so it frequents parks and backyard ponds. Here’s hoping that such coexistence can survive no matter what’s next. Creatures make good neighbors. Peace,
STEVE BORNHOFT EXECUTIVE EDITOR sbornhoft@rowlandpublishing.com
PHOTO BY SAIGE ROBERTS
For bluebirds, Hurricane Michael was a windfall. The species, which attracts attention and inspires affection like few other songbirds, has been seen in the storm’s impact area much more frequently than had been the case in a pre-Michael era. The reason, said Pam Overmyer, a regional coordinator with the Florida Bluebird Society and a co-president of the Bay County Audubon Society, is that bluebirds, resplendent in plumage electric and rust, favor open spaces to a dense wood. The storm thinned out trees in magnificent and terrible fashion, and so it is that bluebirds have moved into places, including Panama City’s Cove neighborhood, once dominated by live oaks dressed in moss. Flora and fauna are impressively quick to take advantage of habitat changes that create environmental opportunities. The New York Times, in a March 28 story headlined “Tourism’s Crash Helped the Planet and Harmed It, Too,” detailed how nature responded when the pandemic sent people home. Around the world, sea turtles flocked to beaches typically trampled by sunbathers. Given the cessation of cruise line activity, whales off Alaska could better hear themselves speak and, I will suppose, think. Thailand’s version of a manatee, dugongs, showed up in eastern Bangkok. Kashmiri goats took to the streets of a coastal town in Wales. In today’s edition of Emerald Coast Magazine, writer Hannah Burke and I profile species that are expanding their ranges to include our area, owing to factors that surely include climatic change. Area anglers will welcome a snook coming into view at the end of their lines, but folks spying a nutria in the lagoon outside their picture window will be alarmed by a “rat like I’ve never seen before.”
