Trump's chief of staff joins chorus opposing controversial Florida land swap

Yahoo

19-05-2025

Over the weekend, outrage over the state of Florida's latest controversy involving public lands spilled onto sidewalks as residents launched protests. By Sunday night, it had also reached the White House.
Susie Wiles, chief of staff for President Donald Trump and a longtime resident of northeast Florida, issued a statement to the Tampa Bay Times condemning the proposed swap of 600 acres of the Guana River Wildlife Management Area to a private company.
'Guana Preserve and its beauty, familiarity and serenity is woven into the fabric of our communities and is, indeed, a treasure in northeast Florida. To allow — even enable — this land grab to occur is outrageous and completely contrary to what our community desires,' Wiles said.
'Elected and appointed leaders should vote against this development wolf in sheep's clothing and preserve this extraordinary natural bounty,' Wiles said. Her comments were first reported by the Tributary, a Jacksonville nonprofit news outlet.
Wiles' comments represent an extraordinary instance of a powerful and often behind-the-scenes figure wading into a local political issue that has struck a nerve across the state, particularly northeast Florida. But she also joins the growing chorus of bipartisan opposition from state and local officials against the proposal to trade away 600 acres of the protected wildlife area in exchange for a patchwork of more than 3,000 acres in four counties.
State Rep. Kim Kendall, a Republican from St. Augustine, plans to hold a news conference Tuesday near the wildlife area in St. Johns County alongside county commissioners to oppose the swap. Kendall is also scheduled to hold another news conference Wednesday morning in the Florida Capitol, just before the proposal will be reviewed by the state's land acquisition council.
Kendall blasted an email to every member of the Florida House around 4:30 a.m. Saturday asking for help building opposition. She also emailed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, asking them to reveal the identity of the person or company behind the proposal, she told the Times.
Opposition to the swap reached across party lines, as Reps. Lindsay Cross of St. Petersburg and Allison Tant of Tallahassee, both Democrats, also voiced their outrage over the weekend.
Last week, the director of the division of state lands abruptly resigned.
On Sunday, a top official from the Florida wildlife agency that manages the Guana River Wildlife Management Area, Rodney Barreto, posted on Facebook a photo of himself standing next to DeSantis and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush after an apparent round of golf together.
'It was a great day of golf this morning at Biltmore Hotel,' Barreto wrote in the social media post.
In the photo, DeSantis is wearing a dark hat with what appears to be the logo of Cabot Citrus Farms, the luxury golf course developer at the center of a previous land swap proposal revealed last year by the Times, which also stirred uproar. Cabot Citrus was seeking more than 300 acres of the Withlacoochee State Forest to expand its golf operation in Hernando County.
In June, that proposal was added to the Cabinet's agenda the day before the meeting through an unusual, last-minute process typically reserved for natural disasters and other extenuating circumstances.
Emails show DeSantis' deputy chief of staff, Cody Farrill, drafted agenda language with environmental agency officials a day before the rest of the Cabinet was officially notified of the new item.
DeSantis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night about the Facebook post or Wiles' statement. Although Wiles managed DeSantis' first campaign for governor, the two have since had an acrimonious falling out.
The Times first reported last week that the deal to trade the Withlacoochee State Forest is dead, after a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said Cabot Citrus Farms 'has informed the department that they are no longer pursuing the exchange.'
But just as one hot-button land swap proposal was shelved, another emerged with the agency announcing a previously unscheduled meeting for its land acquisition council this Wednesday.
The rushed meeting is scheduled at the same time as top officials in Barreto's wildlife agency, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, convene to discuss one of the agency's most controversial proposals in years: opening a black bear hunt in Florida.
Environmental groups, preparing to oppose the hunt, were quick to express their anger that they couldn't be in two places at once to also voice opposition to the proposed Guana land swap.
Hundreds of Floridians convened on the corner of A1A in St. Johns County Saturday morning in protest of the deal.
In a letter sent to the land acquisition council, Clay Henderson, an environmental lawyer and former president of the Florida Audubon Society, pointed to the similar outrage from Floridians last year over plans to develop state parks.
'Floridians deeply care about our state parks and conservation lands,' he wrote. 'This outlandish proposal could destroy the trust that Floridians have come to value that conservation lands should be protected in perpetuity.'