How DEP plans to punish a Port St. Lucie resort for destroying a half-acre mangrove canopy
A Port St. Lucie resort that illegally hacked about 944 mangrove trees and filled wetlands to create a beach may have to pay a $110,395 fine, replant 2,780 trees and be monitored for five years.
“I would love to see the fee be bigger because $110,000 for some of these big corporations, that's literally nothing,” said Dr. Loraé Simpson, Director of Research and Conservation at Florida Oceanographic Society. “It's so important to protect these (trees). We can't have people just go and chop these down and get a slap on their wrist for 100 grand.”
