The newly appointed college board members failed at a meeting this week to solve one of the problems they included on their list of reasons for firing college president Jonathan “Dr. G” Gueverra on July 20.
Trustees on the board of the College of the Florida Keys, when discussing Gueverra’s termination, mentioned his failure to find a solution to a Key deer issue on Big Pine Key. The college leases a former road prison from the state there and plans to install trade school offerings, including commercial driver license training.
The 10-acre former prison site has been closed for years and was heavily damaged in Hurricane Irma in 2017. It has been fenced to keep trespassers and wildlife out of the property, which is not part of the National Key Deer Refuge. But no one told the deer, and four of the endangered, four-legged residents of Big Pine Key found their way in and are not cooperating with efforts to make them leave.
Claiming the four deer, including a fawn, are “trapped” and suffering inside the prison site, advocates from the nonprofit Save Our Key Deer on Big Pine Key have been asking the college to let them install a wildlife gate in the perimeter fence to allow the deer to come and go from the property and access a fresh water source that’s in the middle of the site.
College officials, including Gueverra, interim president Brittany Snyder and the school’s attorneys, have long been concerned about the college’s liability if a person used the wildlife gate to access the site and was injured. The site includes multiple derelict buildings that pose dangers to curious teens and/or homeless people. Since January, three instances of vandalism have occurred when people have cut the padlocks that keep a gate closed and tried to cut holes in the fencing, Snyder told the board, which didn’t seem overly concerned with liability for the college.
Suarez, who is an attorney, asked Snyder, “How many trespass orders have been issued, and how many injuries have occurred on the site from someone accessing the property?”
When Snyder said none, other than the three instances of vandalism, Suarez and
board member Robert Broton endorsed installing the wildlife gates anyway, regardless of liability concerns.
The Save Our Key Deer advocates have held protests and written letters to local newspapers accusing the college of trapping and endangering the four deer by keeping them fenced in on the property, despite reports from wildlife veterinarian Dr. Doug Mader and wildlife experts from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service saying the four deer are healthy and have access to plenty of water and food.
Nevertheless, the college and USFWS have made multiple attempts to lead the deer off the property so it can be resecured, to no avail.
Snyder told the college board at their meeting July 28 in Marathon that USFWS experts were back on the property this week attempting to relocate the deer.
The college board, after electing Suarez as board chair and Peter E. Batty as vice chair, then spent nearly two hours rehashing the Key deer issue.
Several Big Pine residents and Key deer advocates attended the meeting, drawing the attention of board member Michael Downer.
“What surprised me is they decided to hold a bunch of protests after (board chair Suarez) spent a bunch of time with them. I think that’s counterproductive,” Downer said, later adding, “I’m not going to be bullied into taking action that could work against the college regarding liability.”
In a May performance evaluation of Gueverra, he was criticized for a contentious relationship with the Key deer advocates.
Broton eventually made a motion to install the wildlife gates despite liability concerns. That motion failed when no one seconded it.
Board member Eddie Kertis, who was silent for most of the Key deer discussion, finally wrapped up the matter when he reminded the board that the property is overseen by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, a federal agency that is on the property this week attempting to urge the four deer off the property,
Kertis, who is superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, is familiar with the federal government and its oversight of natural resources. He told his fellow board members that as a superintendent of a federal resource, he could not take orders from local advocates. He suggested getting U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez’s office involved if there is an issue involving the Fish & Wildlife Service. Otherwise, the property is in their hands, Kertis said.
His statement effectively ended the lengthy discussion with no progress made. The Key deer advocates left the meeting in frustration, with one of them muttering that the deer wouldn’t survive inside the fence, contrary to USFWS and Mader’s assertions.
One thing the board did decide to do was explore the college’s long-term vision for the Big Pine site.
