Cold Stun 2010

Cold Stun 2010.

Wasn't that a tour by a punk rock group? Or maybe a sequel to a Stallone action movie? If I recall correctly it may have been a professional wrestling pay-per-view event.

If only it were so benign. Cold Stun 2010 was a memorable event to any who were working with wildlife in Florida back in January of 2010. Temperatures across Florida dropped to 50 year lows and remained there for about 12 days. Florida hadn't seen such temperatures since the late 1940's. Pressure on many species of wildlife was extreme during this time.

Perhaps the hardest hit during the cold stun were reptiles. Reptile bodies tend to shut down when the temperature drops. This survival strategy does well for a cold snap of a few days. But 12 days is a killer, literally. Some say that up to 40% of the American Crocodiles in Florida were lost during those days. Most Americans think of South Florida as very hot but it's one of the coldest places that American Crocodiles can survive.

American Crocodile in warmer times

Sea turtles were another reptile hit hard. Roughly 4,500 sea turtles were rescued to be warmed up. Nine hundred were known to be killed and many more were probably never seen and died of the cold. Here's a video of the turtle rescue from the FWC.

Manatees were another hard hit animal. Over 200 died when the temperatures cratered and stayed there. Gives some perspective to the 8 that have died due to the algae bloom in Indian River this year.

Manatees staying warm at power plant

Manatees staying warm at power plant

I didn't live in Florida in January of 2010. I had vaguely heard of the cold stun of 2010 from a few wildlife managers. They talked of it with the awe older people in the north talk of The Great Winter of their childhood. But in the past few days I've been reading about snook to prepare yesterday's article. Virtually the entire year's young in the estuaries were killed by the cold stun. Shallow water estuaries get cold quicker than deeper waters. Lots of other fish in the estuaries were lost at the same time.

But the cold stun of 2010 did have a couple of good affects, at least from the point of view of native animals. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission estimates that half the Burmese Pythons in the Everglades died. Lakes in Central and Northern Florida became tilapia free for the first time in a decade as the water temperatures fell below where they could survive. Iguanas froze and dropped from the trees throughout the Southern Florida.

Too cold to climb trees today Too cold to climb trees today The reason this event was so severe is that many of the animals of Florida are tropical species. They exist in Florida at the extreme northern edge of their ability to survive. A cold snap can take them into territory that's just too difficult to make it.

Most of my articles are about me learning as much as telling. I had heard of the cold stun of 2010, but only a little. It was good to go back and read some of the newspapers of the time and watch the cold stun unfold. This was an unpredictable event that complicated the management of countless species.

And it shows just how fragile many species in Florida really are. The cold stun of 2010 was a remarkable event. Many don't remember how remarkable it was for the animal population and most of us who moved here since don't even know of it. That's unfortunate.