Slow deaths of 5 tortoises expose horrifying practice (WalMart developm't)

[seafan]

Slow deaths of 5 tortoises expose horrifying practice
The state allows the Wal-Mart store's developers to bury the tortoises alive.

By Robert P. King
Monday, December 19, 2005


North Palm Beach County shoppers looking for low-priced pants, patio furniture and DVD players will owe an awesome debt to five dead reptiles.

The five gopher tortoises had the bad luck to dig their burrows on the site of a future Wal-Mart in Lake Park. And they paid a ghastly price: The state allowed the store's developers to bury the tortoises alive earlier this year, leaving them to starve or gasp for air for the weeks or months it would take them to die. Wal-Mart paid $11,409 for the permit.



As many as 74,000 gopher tortoises have met the same doom in the past 14 years, with the blessing of Florida's wildlife regulators.
But this time, the fate of the Lake Park Five inspired an outcry that Cynthia Pandolfe heard more than 4,800 miles away.
"I was outraged and shocked that they can do this," said Pandolfe, a Honolulu resident who was one of many people to receive an e-mail alert from the Humane Society of the United States denouncing the actions of Wal-Mart and the state. "They're basically selling their souls."

The Humane Society's Nov. 23 alert, inspired by a tip from a resident, drew hundreds of similar responses, the group estimates. It came too late to save those five tortoises, but it cast a nationwide light on a practice that disturbs even some who participate in it.

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2005/12/19/m1b_Tortoise_1218.html