The natural beauty of Florida's state parks has long been under attack

Yahoo

03-03-2025

The need to make Florida's parks scheme-proof against the state's elected officials goes deeper than last summer's plot.
The impetus of the State Park Preservation Act (SB 80) before the Florida Legislature this session grew from last summer's clandestine attempt to change the character of some state parks by building among other things, golf courses, pickleball courts and lodges on them.
But that was far from the first time that state officials saw Florida's beautiful, undisturbed natural parks as something that needed to be bulldozed, paved and monetized.
Thirteen years before Gov. Ron DeSantis envisioned Florida's parks as future sites of Jack Nicklaus golf courses, Gov. Rick Scott was imagining the same thing.
Despite Florida being overrun with golf courses, a bill in 2011 was proposed to build Nicklaus-designed golf courses in five state parks, one in every region of the park system.
Oh, yeah. And each park with a golf course would also be allowed to have a hotel with a liquor license inside the park. Naturally.
The bill, championed by then-state Rep. Pat Rooney, R-Palm Beach Gardens, reasoned that golf courses were needed in state parks 'to enhance the state's reputation throughout the United States as a premier destination for golf.'
That didn't fly with the public. But clearly, the tone in Tallahassee since the Scott administration has been looking at state parks as business opportunities, not public preserves of natural beauty.
A year after scrapping the golf course plan, Florida approved billboard advertising on the state's nature trails, and the following year, the state floated the idea of selling about 5,300 acres from state parks and watersheds to bolster the state budget, another plan that was stopped by public outcry.
As governor, Scott promoted the novel idea that Florida's parks should be able to pay for themselves.
In 2015, his newly appointed head of the Department of Environmental Protection, Jon Steverson, told state lawmakers that the state parks only generated 77% of the costs to run them.
Instead, Florida's state parks ought to turn a profit, Steverson said. His solution was to allow private timber companies to harvest trees in state parks.
As he talked to the senators about the park, he sounded more like a logger than a guardian of Florida's natural public land.
He used Torreya State Park in Bristol as an example of a park that brought in 24% of its cost, yet had lots of natural resources that could be monetized.
Take our Florida state parks poll: Should Florida's State Parks be developed? | Poll
'What I do have there, standing on the stump, is over 3,000 acres of off-site sand pine,' Steverson told the legislators. 'Right now in the Panhandle, sand pine is the platinum of timber products, bumping on $25 a ton on pole.'
'I need to be cutting that,' he said.
Under Scott, eight state parks were opened up for cattle grazing. But when the state planned to allow 315 cows to graze on the land of the Myakka River State Park southeast of Sarasota, there was yet another public outcry.
'The state is looking at state parks as cash cows,' Frank Jackalone at the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club said at the time. 'That's a pun, but that's what it is.'
That's been the recent history of Florida's state parks: A parade of bad ideas to degrade them derailed by public opinion.
More: Florida finds use for Black history in promoting unwanted golf courses in state park
Last summer's park development scheme, hatched by DeSantis' office and dubbed the Great Outdoors Initiative, would have probably happened if it weren't for the courageous instincts of James Gaddis, a state mapmaker in the Florida Department of Environmental Resources turned-whistleblower.
Gaddis realized there was something wrong with a secret plan involving public parks, and that the public would have barely any notice about what was going on before it was approved.
Once Gaddis revealed the plan, public protests and bi-partisan complaints from lawmakers put an end to it.
More: Aborted golf course plan at Jonathan Dickinson State Park bogeys environmental protection
And now, Florida Sen. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, a lawmaker who represents the area including Jonathan Dickinson State Park — where three golf courses were slated to be built as part of that plan — wants to make sure that doesn't happen again.
Her bill would specifically ban golf courses and other invasive changes to the parks, and require 30 days public notice before any changes in the parks are approved.
It's about time. Messing with Florida's state parks has gone on for too long without a legislative guardrail enacted.
We can't keep depending on whistleblowers and last-minute grassroots organizing to save the state's parks.
Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, which is part of the USA Today Network-Florida.
The editorial was written as part of a campaign by the USA Today Network Florida Opinion Group to support Senate Bill 80 and protect Florida's state parks. Email letter, op-eds, even photos to [e-mail], and we will publish them.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida state parks are under attack. It's time for change | Opinion