'A monumental moment': How grassroots power is reshaping Florida's environmental agenda

Yahoo

23-05-2025

As spring flings go, Florida environmentalists just had an epic one.
In the Florida Capitol's halls of power, they enjoyed a string of rapid-fire successes, starting with efforts to protect the state's parks from the construction of luxury lodges and the sharp 'pop-pop-pop' of pickleball courts.
The winning streak began in May, when the Legislature passed the State Parks Preservation Act, and a bill to prohibit oil drilling along the Apalachicola River. (And Gov. DeSantis already has signed the parks bill.)
And then, over the next two and a half weeks, away from the legislative arena and along the bureaucratic front, an alliance of statewide and local groups scored two more victories.
They stopped proposed land swaps with developers that were scheduled for review by the state's Acquisition and Restoration Council. One involved pristine wetland along the Guana River in St. Johns County, and a second included 324 acres of the Florida Wildlife Corridor in the Withlacoochee State Forest.
This display of political muscle by advocates of natural Florida was historic, according to environmental activists, elected officials, and academics.
They compared it to the 1960s when Jupiter Island's Nathaniel Reed convinced Gov. Claude Kirk to stop plans to cut the state in half with a cross-Florida barge canal. Reed also got Kirk to halt construction of a jetport in the Everglades. Reed would go on to become Assistant U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
The parks bill and oil drilling ban, as examples of the public exerting its will on the Legislature, reminded one expert of when the late Gov. Bob Graham led efforts to pass the Growth Management Act of 1985.
'What you are seeing as advocacy is Florida voters wanting to be active participants in democracy,' said Tara Newsom, a St. Petersburg College political scientist professor and director of the Center for Civic Learning & Community Engagement.
The display of political effectiveness by a dozen statewide and local organizations comes at a time when an increasingly bitter feud between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature has nearly brought state government to a full stop.
Even though the regular 60-day legislative session was supposed to be over by now, Florida still needs a state budget in time for the beginning of the 2025-26 fiscal year on July 1, and lawmakers are not scheduled to be back in Tallahassee until June. The Florida House and DeSantis have been arguing over whether to cut the state sales tax or property taxes while the Senate has looked for a compromise.
In the meantime though, advocates for natural Florida are celebrating a successful May: 'This is really a monumental moment about how people made something magical happen,' said Susannah Randolph, chapter director of Sierra Club Florida.
'Something happened that we didn't like. We told our legislators, and they took action. That's the way government is supposed to work,' Randolph said.
The Sierra Club is among a coalition of groups that also include the Florida Native Plant Society, Audubon, Wildlife Federation, 1000 Friends of Florida, Kill the Drill and Stand-up for Wekiva, among others. They opposed oil drilling and proposed development at state parks, and feared the land swaps would signal conservation land bought by taxpayers could be bought by developers.
The Guana Wildlife Management Area was purchased with tax dollars in 1984 to be protected for eternity; it was created by a forerunner of the Florida Forever conservation program.
When the state's Acquisition and Restoration Council, under the Department of Environmental Protection, scheduled a meeting to trade 600 acres of pristine Guana wetlands for fragmented parcels elsewhere, opposition quickly organized. Opponents soon realized another land swap had been in the works involving the Withlacoochee State Forest.
In fewer than six days after the Guana land swap was made public, the obscure corporation behind the proposed Guana swap pulled out, blaming "public sentiment resulting from misinformation" as the deal killer.
More: After outrage, group behind land swap involving sensitive Florida wetlands kills deal
More than 50,000 petitions against the swap had been collected. A weekend of demonstrations was held, and a bus to Tallahassee was chartered for people to attend a hearing in Tallahassee when the Guana land swap was to be discussed. The other swap also was pulled.
'All of our public lands, all of our wildlife management areas, all of our forests would be threatened if the swaps were approved,' said Gil Damon of the Downriver Project, a nonprofit focused on protecting north Florida's groundwater and surface water.
A couple of weeks earlier when the parks protection bill had stalled in legislative committees, environmentalists produced more than 100,000 signatures opposed to a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson State Park alone.
When a Florida Senate committee finally met and considered an amendment viewed as softening the bill, Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, told bill sponsor Joe Gruters, a Republican senator from Sarasota, that his amendment had 'blown up my Twitter.' Sen. Rosalind Osgood, D-Tamarac, thanked him for the additional thousands of emails she had received.
Kim Dinkins, policy and planning director for 1000 Friends of Florida, a "smart-growth" advocacy organization, concedes the secret to the unofficial alliance's success this past spring is Floridians' love for its natural places. It's not just an Old Florida value, she explained. It's in a Floridian's DNA.
'Even for transplants. They are drawn to Florida's beauty and recognize there is something special about Florida and its natural landscape, even if they live in the middle of a city,' Dinkins said.
Newsom said social media provides today's activists with an effective organizing tool they are just beginning to discover how to employ.
Class presentations by her political science students demonstrate how they use social media to recruit followers, share information, and educate each other about the nuances of an issue. A recent presentation involving state parks detailed how social media was used to organize protests, schedule events, and provide transportation.
'Grassroots movements are always the beginning of trends that land in the ballot box,' Newsom said. 'I suspect what is showing now is the tip of an iceberg that might emerge in the midterm elections.'
That election is more than a year off. Of more immediate concern for many of the groups involved in this spring's battles over how to manage natural Florida is a pending bear hunt.
Activists on both sides packed four meeting rooms when the Fish and Wildlife Commission voted May 21 to develop rules for an annual bear hunt, starting this December.
'It often feels like the dust has hardly settled after one fight to protect Florida's special places before another threat emerges,' Dinkins wrote in a memo to 1000 Friends of Florida on May 20. The FWC's final vote on a bear hunt will be in August.
Veterans of Florida's environmental battles said while they may be on a roll of successes now, more clashes lie ahead.
'It's always been two steps forward, one step backward in Florida," said Julie Hauserman, an activist and former journalist who has written about the Florida environment for 40 years. "There's always going to be developers, miners, and despoilers trying to get their way ....
'But occasionally we get some wins," she added. And the victories this May "are great wins.'
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at [e-mail] and is on X as @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: May brings rare string of victories for Florida environmental allies