Local conservationists boycott hotels

The Knob and Valley Audubon Society wants students to sober up before their spring break and think about the sea turtles. The environmentally conscious organization has called for a boycott of three hotels in Panama City, Fla. -- Days Inn, Ramada Inn and Holiday Inn Sunspree -- because it says the hotels are hurting sea turtles, a nearly endangered species.\nThe trio of beach side hotels have huge flood lights that confuse the sea turtles, causing some of them to stray from the beach and sometimes die, said Lorna Patrick, a biologist with the Panama City division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. \nNick Macahan, the initiator of the Knob and Valley Audubon Society boycott, said he wasn't aware of any other chapters of the Audubon Society striking against the hotels. \nFlorida's beaches are essential in the reproductive cycle of sea turtles, said Gary Appelson, the policy director of the Sea Turtle Survival League. \nEach female sea turtle digs a hole in the beach with its flippers and lays its eggs inside it. The mothers then leave their eggs and crawl back to the ocean. After the babies hatch, they must struggle to the ocean before the sun comes up, or they will most likely die from dehydration or predators. \nThe bright lights of the hotels cause some of the turtles to get confused because they usually use the light of the moon to guide them back to the ocean, according to the Sea Turtle Survival League.\n"Some of the ... hotels are lit up with floodlights from top to bottom, and you can see them for miles," Appelson said.\nThe call for a boycott has more effect on some students than others. Junior Mo Qadri has reservations at the Days Inn in Panama City for spring break and said the boycott won't make him change his reservations.\n"It would be a hassle, and I don't want to mess with it," he said.\nBut freshman Caitlyn Hyde said if she were planning a stay at one of the hotels, she would probably change her reservations, "so the sea turtles don't die and go toward the light."\nDespite the protest, the hotels are not in violation of any ordinance or law right now; however, they are currently fighting the possibility of a turtle lighting ordinance to include their properties. \nJulie Hilton, owner of the three hotels, said she doesn't want to hurt sea turtles. The problem is that to comply with the sea turtle lighting ordinance, she would have to break human safety laws concerning the lighting of pools and parking lots, she said.\n"We want to do something that is pro-turtle and pro-people," she said.\nHilton said she has asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to give her company an example of a hotel that complies with both the human safety laws and the turtle ordinance, but she said they have failed to do so as of yet. \nAppelson said he has never heard of this argument of a conflict between human safety laws and the turtle ordinance before, but hotels up and down the coast already comply with turtle regulations.\nFreshmen Carter Figg, who is going to Panama City for spring break, said he is glad he doesn't have to deal with the conflict.\n"I would care about the turtles, but I would probably go (to the hotels)," he said, but when he learned which hotels were being boycotted he was relieved.\n"I'm not going to any one of those, so I feel good," he said.