Friends Meet with Senator Rubio's Staff

Board members from five Friends groups, working with more than 10 of the 29 National Wildlife Refuges in Florida, recently held a virtual meeting with Senator Rubio's public lands and natural resources staffer Connor Tomlinson and legislative correspondent Caitlin Moore.

Our goal was to advocate for the Senator, who serves on the Committee on Appropriations, to do everything in his power to avoid cuts to the refuges' budgets in 2024.

Thursday and Friday, July 13 and 14, 2023, were "Refuge-Friends' Days" on Capitol Hill. Meetings were set up with 18 Senate and House staff members who serve on appropriations committees by the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit that lobbies in favor of the whole National Wildlife Refuge System and all 550 refuges nationwide.

Board member Peg Hall participated for the Friends of Lower Suwannee & Cedar Keys NWRs. Florida has more refuges than any other states except California and North Dakota. As we all are well aware, refuges bring economic, environmental, and quality of life benefits to their regions. With 29 in Florida, cuts to the National Wildlife Refuge System would hurt our state more than others, a point we wanted to make to Senator Rubio.

The other Florida Friends groups participating were the Ding Darling Wildlife Society, Friends of Florida Panther NWR, Friends of Tampa Bay NWRs, Florida Keys Wildlife Society.

These five Friends groups support 12 of the National Wildlife Refuges in Florida: Lower Suwannee, Cedar Keys, Crocodile Lake, National Key Deer, Great White Heron, Key West, J. N. Ding Darling, Florida Panther, Ten Thousand Islands, Egmont Key, Passage Key, and The Pinellas.

The Florida Friends groups focused particularly on the fact that refuge law enforcement is drastically under resourced.

About half of the national wildlife refuges, including Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys, have no law enforcement officer assigned directly to them. Officers must come from other refuges when needed. Each officer, on average, covers an area about the size of Rhode Island. Any cut to refuge budgets would likely exacerbate this dangerous situation for wildlife and for visitors to the refuges.