Charles Lee, Director of Advocacy for Audubon of Florida, reviews the land swap deal

I have reviewed the document that Robert Christianson circulated which purports to support a finding that exchange of the "Sand Lakes Tract" is justified because the property is "no longer needed for conservation purposes".

Personally, I consider this a sad day for the protection of lands acquired by Florida under the Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever Programs, because the logic and reasoning utilized in this document, if also focused on many other tracts of similarly acquired state lands, could easily yield the same result.

One of the most basic flaws in this process is that SJRWMD staff has set about to write this report to justify a politically predetermined conclusion; that the district staff should recommend the exchange of this specific tract of land to the Governing Board of the District. The report attempts to color what are largely the same set of biological facts analyzed when the property was purchased in the first place with negative opinions designed to achieve a particular result. It is clear that the motivation of district staff is in effort to settle a lawsuit threatened by the Corrigans in a strategic move on their part to consolidate land holdings along the I-95 corridor for future development purposes.

A "smoking gun" that points to the fallacies in the District Staff's analysis is this paragraph in the Executive Summary:

"It was concluded that the property contains some conservation resources typical of this type of land in this region of the county.  The only UNIQUE CHARACTERISTIC OR CONTRIBUTION to the factors evaluated on the property is an approximately 50-acre area of scrubby flatwoods." (ALL CAPS added for emphasis)

Thus, what has happened here is that the SJRWMD staff has invented a NEW STANDARD for determining that a tract is "no longer needed for conservation"; that standard would hold that in order for any tract to be protected against being traded away, sold or surplussed, the tract must be found to have a "unique characteristic or contribution" that is NOT "...typical of this type of land in this region of the county...".

To carry this dangerous logic to its probable conclusion the result will be that one day in the future some interest will approach a WMD or DSL with a proposal to buy/exchange some part of a large state or WMD owned tract or group of tracts.  Lets take the "Three Lakes" parcel in Osceola County as an example. It would be possible to say that MUCH of "Three Lakes" is "...typical of this type of land in this region of the county...", and that, therefore, ONLY that part of the tract determined to have a " unique characteristic or contribution" should be saved from being sold or traded away. So, in essence only "the best of the best" of any parcel of state or WMD property, determined under the ad-hoc pressures of the moment (such as a lawsuit threat) is insured against being sold or traded away.

I submit that this is NOT what was intended by the Constitutional and statutory restriction allowing only those lands that are "no longer needed for conservation" to be disposed of.

Good people may do inappropriate things when the ends seem to justify the means. Here, the desire to avoid litigation by an aggressive landowner may serve to definitively mold state policy regarding the disposal of conservation lands moving forward into the future for all of the millions of acres we are collectively trying to preserve.

The SJRWMD analysis on the Sand Lake parcel may in fact be the most specific justification for disposal of conservation lands produced since the Constitutional amendment. It deserves the highest level of scrutiny at the upper levels of our leaders in Tallahassee for that reason. It begins on the wrong footing even if it reaches the result most comfortable for its authors at the moment. It has the potential to place protection of all of our state's conservation lands on a very slippery slope.

It is my sincere hope that our state leaders will reject this proposal.


Charles Lee
Audubon of Florida
(407) 620-5178

< < < back to Protect Conservation Lands

Fair Use Disclaimer

The Pelican Island Audubon Society web site, www.pelicanislandaudubon.org, is a nonprofit, noncommercial web site that, at times, may contain Copyrighted material that have not always been specifically authorized by the Copyright owner. The Society makes such material available in its efforts to advance the understanding of issues related to Florida’s natural environment in hopes of helping to find solutions for those problems. It believes that this constitutes a “fair use” of any such Copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Persons wishing to use Copyrighted material from this site for purposes of their own that go beyond “fair use” must first obtain permission from the copyright owner.

All articles are copyrighted by the respective newspapers.