SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, FLA. (WSVN) - Ron Magill, animal expert and Communication Director with Zoo Miami, wrote a passionate email to the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners calling for the rejection of a lease extension for a proposed “Miami Wilds” theme park on Zoo Miami property.
The email, sent by Magill in his capacity as a private citizen, highlighted concerns regarding the potential environmental impact of the project and its implications for the region’s wildlife.
“We as county employees at the zoo have been told we’re forbidden from speaking about this project, from expressing our opinions,” said Magill. “So I had to take the day off, have you come to my home to speak about this because I am passionate about this, I don’t care if I lose my job over this, I’d rather lose my job than my credibility as a conservationist.”
Magill said he wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the zoo but was exercising his right as a private citizen to express his personal views — that this promotional video doesn’t show the impacts of what he said is a project that has been tried and failed across Miami-Dade in other locations.
“They’re gonna charge for parking, they’re gonna expect numbers I don’t think they’re going to make and at the end of the day it’s gonna be a boondoggle and it’s gonna end up to be a white elephant, I hate to use that kind of pun,” he continued. “Zoo Miami is a bad location for this water park.”
Miami Wilds said it will generate more than $120 million in payments to the county on top of over 400 new jobs and property taxes.
“It is really only the waterpark and it is really only in this one segment of the parking lot, which is far away from environmental zones,” said Bernard Zyschovich, a Miami Wilds partner, in a promotional video by the attraction’s developers.
Scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, the proposed lease extension has raised red flags within the conservation community.
“I think the last water park around here was back in Homestead back when I was like 10 years old. So we definitely need something new, something exciting down in the south,” said a South Dade resident in the video.
Magill, who has over 43 years of experience in the field, emphasized the critical importance of safeguarding Florida’s natural treasures, particularly in light of growing habitat loss—the greatest threat facing wildlife today.
“The bottom line is that it’s mostly bad for our natural environment, the natural treasure that makes Florida what it is,” Magill said.
Zoo Miami sits on 740 acres containing the largest remaining fragment of Pine Rockland habitat outside of Everglades National Park.
This globally critically endangered ecosystem houses many endangered and federally protected species, including the Florida bonneted bat, Bartram’s scrub hairstreak butterfly, rim rock crowned snake, Miami tiger beetle, and the gopher tortoise.
In total, 110 endangered species are known to exist around Zoo Miami, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth.
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