Environmental groups sue National Park Service over waterpark

Four conservation groups sued last week in federal court charging the National Park Service with failing to protect plants and wildlife threatened by a planned 27.5-acre water park, Miami Wilds, and retail development adjacent to Zoo Miami.

The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of Florida by the Center for Biological Diversity, Bat Conservation International, Miami Blue Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association, and Tropical Audubon Society.

It claims the development would endanger the Florida bonneted bat, Miami tiger beetle, Bartram’s scrub-hairstreak butterfly, endangered plants and globally imperiled Pine Rocklands.

Pine Rocklands grow on the coastal Miami Rock Ridge, according to the “Regulatory Economic Resources” county website. “The ridge is a limestone rock outcropping that extends south and west from North Miami Beach to Long Pine Key in Everglades National Park. Over 225 types of native plants occur here and more than 20% of the plant species are found here and nowhere else in the world. Five of these plant species are federally listed as threatened or endangered.”

In 2022 the Park Service signed an agreement releasing land-use restrictions on the site of the proposed water park. “But the agency failed to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service,” the lawsuit states, “to make sure the development will not jeopardize endangered species or destroy critical habitat – a key step required by the Endangered Species Act.

“The agency also failed to undertake requisite environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act,” according to the lawsuit.

“It’s absurd that we have to battle the Park Service to save South Florida’s biodiversity,” said attorney Elise Bennett, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Thoughtless development has driven the Florida bonneted bat, Miami tiger beetle and many other rare Florida creatures into tiny fragments of remaining habitat. To save one of the precious few of these still wild places in urban Miami-Dade, we have to take the Park Service to court.”

Project spokesperson Paul Lambert, managing principal at Lambert Advisory, told Miami Today that the lawsuit “is only about the sequence of environmental reviews, not if the reviews are warranted.

“We all agree the Section 7 review process within the Endangered Species Act is warranted.” Mr. Lambert continued. “Despite what the groups bringing the lawsuit claim, we are confident the federal agencies have fully followed the law.”

Under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, federal agencies must consult with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries when any action the agency “carries out, funds, or authorizes may affect either a species listed as threatened or endangered under the Act, or any critical habitat designated for it,” the agency’s website explains.

“Miami Wilds has continually made clear,” Mr. Lambert said, “that we will not begin construction of the waterpark, hotel, and retail elements of the development until the Section 7 consultation process with the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] has been completed, for those listed species that may be affected.”

Ms. Bennett, however, says that Mr. Lambert’s statement “betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

“Federal agencies are required to comply with these laws before taking agency action,” Ms. Bennett said. “The National Park Service’s entrance into the agreement with Miami-Dade County and execution of the release to transfer land-use restrictions away from the project area are agency actions that opened the door for development. Before taking those actions, the agency should have – and utterly failed to – ensure doing so wouldn’t jeopardize the future existence of the bat and other endangered species.”

Mr. Lambert dismisses the position: “This lawsuit,” he told Miami Today “is exclusively an effort to slow the development of the long planned and voter approved Miami Wilds economic development project being built on the continually used parking lots of Zoo Miami. It has no chance of success at stopping the project.”

The park next to Zoo Miami is to include a lazy river attraction, wave pools, slides, kiddie pools, and a beach with shady landscape, a 200-room hotel, and 15,000 to 20,000 square feet of retail.

“The Florida bonneted bat is one of the rarest mammals on Earth,” said Mike Daulton, executive director at Bat Conservation International. “These kinds of incredibly rare species need the full protection offered by the Endangered Species Act.”

“The National Park Service’s failure to consult with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and conduct an environmental review under NEPA is a procedural mistake that will harm endangered species and their habitat,” said Lauren Jonaitis, senior conservation director of Tropical Audubon Society.

“Consultation between federal agencies is a statutory requirement,” said Dennis Olle, president of the Miami Blue Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association. “The fact that the Park Service failed to do so is not only a disappointment, but an unfortunate indication of how tenuous the important federal protections extended to endangered species actually are.”