UPDATE 10/16/2022:  We need letters of support for making the Lower Ichetucknee motorized vessel-free. Click here for more information and to find out how to submit a letter.

UPDATE 10/5/2022:  We are collecting photo and video evidence of damage caused by motorized vessels to the ecosystem on the Lower Ichetucknee River. Please email your photos or videos to us at ichetuckneealliance@gmail.com or call 386-454-0415 with questions or if you have especially large image files (leave voice mail if no answer). Thank you!

We are working to establish a Lower Ichetucknee Springs Protection Zone and the Ichetucknee River needs your help to protect it from damage caused by motorized vessels such as boats and jet skis.

Recreational impacts are increasingly damaging our North Florida springs and rivers, and the Ichetucknee is no exception. While the upper part of the river is protected by the state park’s ban on motorized vessels, the Lower Ichetucknee as it flows through Three Rivers Estates has no such protection.

Many weekends, especially holiday weekends, find the Lower Ichetucknee experiencing heavy motorized vessel traffic that results in turbid water and ecosystem damage to submerged aquatic vegetation and to the shoreline. In addition, the danger posed by motorized vessels to wildlife such as Florida’s iconic manatees is well known.

Thanks to a new state law, Florida Statute 327.45, we now have an opportunity to change this situation to provide more protections for our beloved blue river. This law grants authority to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to establish Springs Protection Zones (SPZs) that “restrict the speed or operation of vessels or that prohibit anchoring, mooring, beaching or grounding of vessels to protect or prevent specified harm to first, second and third magnitude springs and spring groups and their associated spring runs.”

In April 2022, a local citizen filed a request to the FWC to establish a non-motorized vessel SPZ for the Lower Ichetucknee. The Ichetucknee Alliance has been asked to assist with this effort and since our mission is to restore, protect and preserve the Ichetucknee, we immediately agreed.

Establishing a Springs Protection Zone is a new process and all of us, including the FWC, are learning as this process unfolds.

Part of the process involves gaining public support for the SPZ request. In the future, we may put out a call for letters of support from individuals and organizations. In the meantime, if you have photo or video documentation of ecosystem harm being caused on the Lower Ichetucknee by motorized vessels, please email that evidence to us at ichetuckneealliance@gmail.com along with a description of what the images show. If you have large photo or video files or have questions about the documentation we need, please call the Alliance at 386-454-0415 (leave voice mail message if no answer) and we’ll try to answer your questions. Thank you!

Watch this space for future updates!

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

-from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, 1971.