Article: Tortoise likely to get a break: Moves to conserve the species are gaining support, even among developers.

Byline: Kevin Spear

May 22--Florida's highly criticized policy of allowing developers to kill gopher tortoises in the path of construction could all but end next year. Since 1992, the state's wildlife agency has allowed housing construction and other projects to entomb nearly 80,000 tunnel-dwelling tortoises rather than deal with the extra time and cost of moving them to a conservation tract. Developers in Orange and Osceola counties lead the state in permitted killings, often paying upward of $1,000 per tortoise. But the state could largely abandon the practice in a series of steps that begins next month. That's when the Florida Fish and Wildlife ...

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