Faith and the shoreline

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: caring for creation.

On Florida’s Space Coast, business is booming. Millions of visitors come from all over to tour the Kennedy Space Center, to enjoy the beaches, and to watch the wildlife along its 72 miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline.

REICHARD: But some of that building and developing has had negative impacts on animals and the environment.

One Christian conservation group is trying to change that, looking for ways to be more mindful of God’s creatures as development continues.

WORLD’s Grace Snell has the story.

SOUND: [Birds cawing, helicopters whirring overhead]

GRACE SNELL: At Space View Park in Titusville, Florida, wide concrete walkways overlook the Indian River Lagoon.

Just across the water is where Apollo 11 launched. Crowds of visitors still come here to watch NASA and SpaceX launch rockets.

SOUND: [Birds squawking]

But all that activity and development has had other impacts as well.

SLUKA: So you can see, like with this parking lot, it rains, whatever is in these cars just going right straight down into the lagoon right here.

Robert Sluka heads up the Marine Conservation Programme at A Rocha. It’s a Christian environmental group with projects here…and around the world.

SOUND: [Birds squawking, car passing by]

The lagoon is one of the most biodiverse estuaries in North America. It’s teeming with life: manatees, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, and all kinds of birds and fish.

SLUKA: You know, the shoreline in this area, you can see all these rocks, all this cement, sea walls…

There’s a bit of natural shoreline here, but mostly concrete sea walls run down to the waterline: a manmade barrier designed to protect against hurricane damage and erosion.

SLUKA: Animals and creatures can’t use that…

Sluka loves the ocean. He also loves God. And he wants this area to be a place where people and sea creatures can both flourish.

This region is one of the primary nesting grounds for horseshoe crabs in Florida. But the sea walls built to protect people also keep horseshoe crabs from crawling ashore to lay their eggs.

And that affects all kinds of creatures. Humans, included.

SLUKA: Horseshoe crabs have a chemical in their blood that’s used in like saline drips and used in a lot of medicines to test for purity of the solution.

Horseshoe crabs aren’t listed as endangered in the U.S. But their numbers have fallen as much as two-thirds along some parts of the Atlantic Coast since the 1990s. That’s due to a combination of factors, including habitat loss and pollution.

And Sluka says horseshoe crabs aren’t the only sea creatures at risk.

SLUKA: This lagoon has suffered a lot of damage at people’s hands, and so this lagoon that was created to praise God is a shadow of its former self.

Several years ago, manatees along Florida’s east coast suffered an Unusual Mortality Event.

SLUKA: Which is a nice way of saying tons of manatees starved to death.

Experts say pollution from septic tanks, fertilizers, and rain runoff fueled algal blooms that destroyed their food supply.

SLUKA: You know, because of how we acted, and we built, and we didn't care for that lagoon, those manatees suffered.

Over 50 other creatures in the Indian River Lagoon are either threatened or endangered. Some of them only exist here.

SLUKA: And when an animal goes extinct, it’s like, you know, one of the voices of God’s orchestra or choir going out.

Sluka says God made all creation to praise Him, and one way Christians glorify God is to help His creatures thrive.

SLUKA: So if you got this crab sitting on a beach, how does a crab flourish? Well, it flourishes by being what a crab is supposed to be, a crab in all its crabbiness.

But the Bible doesn’t give an exact prescription for how to care for God’s world. Sluka says that’s where science comes in.

SLUKA: And we can study them and understand—like the lagoon—the things that we’re doing that are keeping that animal, Biblically speaking, from glorifying God, from praising God.

He says says there are lots of different ways to help: growing local plants to help naturally filter rain runoff, cutting down on single use plastic, and pitching in with beach cleanups, to name a few.

Not far from Space View Park, a tiny island bobs offshore. This is a spoil island—one of dozens that popped up from extra sediment left after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dug the Intracoastal Waterway.

SLUKA: It provides great habitat. We’ve caught seahorses nearby here. Here’s the molt of a horseshoe crab. This is a place where horseshoe crabs can spawn.

Sluka says manmade islands like this one are a great example of living with nature, instead of against it.

SLUKA: People can come out on the weekend for recreation, but also it provides good habitat for species.

Sluka acknowledges most environmental issues don’t have easy or clear-cut answers… and associated political and economic concerns can make them even more complex. But he encourages Christians not to retreat from the environmental sector.

SLUKA: The environment is not political, it’s Biblical. If God is the Creator of all, that includes the nonhuman creatures as well.

And he challenges those who appreciate God’s creation to look for ways to care for their own corners of it.

SLUKA: We need Christians to get out there and say, ‘Okay, I don’t maybe like some of the solutions that are being offered, but I’m going to be creative and come up with other ones that fit in with how I believe.’

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell, in Titusville, Florida.

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