More vacant platted lots than anywhere in Southwest Florida — and more gopher tortoises. We survey North Port practically every week.
North Port has tens of thousands of platted quarter-acre lots from the original 1959 General Development plat — and most of the still-vacant ones sit on dry, sandy uplands that gopher tortoises have been colonizing for sixty years. No city in Southwest Florida generates more tortoise surveys per new home than North Port.
If you're building here, treat the survey as a standard line item, like the soil test: on typical North Port lots we find burrows often enough that skipping the check is a genuine schedule gamble. A burrow discovered after your clearing crew mobilizes means an immediate stop-work on that area and a 2–6 week FWC permit wait you could have run in parallel months earlier.
We're fifteen minutes away in Port Charlotte and survey North Port lots in batches weekly — owner-builders, production builders, and realtors all use us for the same reason: it's handled in days, not weeks.
From single infill lots to builder packages.
The bread and butter: a new home on a vacant GDC-platted lot. Survey first, then site work — in that order.
Production and semi-custom builders running multiple North Port lots at once. We batch-survey packages on one mobilization with per-lot reports.
Parcels near waterways face the off-site relocation rule — worth checking before purchase.
Larger and older lots with mature scrub — higher burrow counts, but sometimes room for on-site relocation.
North Port issues its own building and lot-clearing permits, and the city expects state wildlife compliance to be resolved before land clearing — if a reviewer suspects burrows, they will direct you to FWC. The underlying law is statewide: Rule 68A-27, F.A.C. protects every burrow with a 25-foot no-disturbance buffer, and only an FWC permit resolves a conflict.
The efficient sequence for a North Port build: order the survey when you order your plans. It's valid 90 days for the FWC application, the report is next-business-day, and if relocation is needed the 2–6 week FWC review runs while your building permit is in review — so the tortoise never delays the slab.
The same four steps everywhere we work — most clients only ever make one phone call.
Give us the property address and your timeline. We confirm whether a survey is needed and schedule within 48 hours.
We walk 100% of the parcel, GPS-map every burrow, and deliver an FWC-format written report the next business day.
If tortoises are present, we prepare and submit the FWC relocation permit application for you. Typical review: 2–6 weeks.
Once permitted, we capture and relocate the tortoises to an approved recipient area. You're legal to clear and build.
Same transparent pricing across our whole service area — no location markups.
| Gopher tortoise survey | $350 / quarter acre |
| Relocation (up to 2 tortoises, permit included) | $1,400 |
| Each additional tortoise | +$400 |
| Off-site recipient site fee (waterfront/canal lots — paid to the conservation site) | $5,000 / tortoise |
Full details, examples by lot size, and what's never included: see the pricing page.
Order the survey with your plans and the tortoise step never touches your schedule. We're 15 minutes away.