(Don't) pave paradise

In Florida, the public is done with over-development

DeSantis’s Department of Environmental Protection wants to build three golf courses within Jonathan Dickinson State Park / Photo by Ricky

“The 2024-25 Great Outdoor Initiative”: that’s a nice-sounding name. But that’s always the trick.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s summary sounds nice too. The point of this program is “to expand public access” to the state’s parks, according to a press release. But the same release offers two further goals, both a bit trickier: The DEP wants to “increase outdoor activities and provide new lodging options.”

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Which, when you get into the details, means hotels, golf, and pickleball—forms of development that do not sit well with many Floridians.

The DEP announced the Great Outdoors Initiative on August 19. The agency planned to host public meetings today to hear feedback, one near each of the nine parks slated for development. Some environmental groups considered that timeline too quick—quick enough “to squash public engagement.” (Indeed, a leaked memo apparently instructed officials to first play a prerecorded message, then decline to answer any questions.)

Nonetheless, the public engaged.

One element of the initiative, a plan for a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, became a particular flashpoint. The park, the largest in southeast Florida, includes some of the last stands of rolling scrub habitat. The three proposed golf courses would eat up 1,000 acres—likely impacting protected species like the Florida scrub jay. Critics point out that golf courses might look green, but they soak up water and require fertilizer for upkeep. Besides, Florida already has plenty of golf courses. Hundreds of people gathered at the park to protest, and the “Protect Jonathan Dickinson State Park” group on Facebook quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

The other big controversy was a proposed 350-room hotel at the 1,600-acre Anastasia State Park in northeast Florida. The DEP, in what it called a “fact check,” compared this property to a historic lodge in another Florida park—but did not note that the existing lodge sits within a 6,000-acre state park and has only 27 rooms. The scales are incomparable. Times-Union columnist Mark Woods points out that the proposed new “lodge” would be one of the biggest hotels along the local coastline.

Amid the discontent, the venue slated to host the public meeting in Stuart, near Jonathan Dickinson State Park, decided to pull out, citing “safety concerns.” The DEP ultimately pushed back all of the meetings, which will likely be held next week. Then, on Sunday, the nonprofit that had proposed the golf course withdrew the plans. (There are no updates on the hotel, however.) Floridians can provide comments about the remaining components of the initiative with this form.

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Some things to note:

• DeSantis’s precarious conservation credentials: DeSantis’s rise in Florida was staked on his claim to be a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist, and his press secretary again invoked Roosevelt during this controversy. As I recently noted in The New Republic, many environmental groups are skeptical of the comparison and think DeSantis has been disserving the Everglades. What I found on the ground in Florida, though, was that DeSantis’s messaging had mostly worked. I can’t help but wonder if this initiative might be what fractures the governor’s green image.

• Celebrity movers and shakers: One of the more interesting wrinkles is that the nonprofit behind the golf plans is tied to golfer Jack Nicklaus—who is also one of the celebrity board members of the Everglades Foundation, a conservation nonprofit closely tied to Ron DeSantis, one that critics claim he uses to greenwash his image. Other politicians had previously rejected Nicklaus’s idea of a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson, but the current plan was approved after a one-on-one meeting between DeSantis and the nonprofit’s founder.

• Bipartisan opposition: The response against the new initiative has been overwhelming, and from what I can tell, universally negative. It’s a bipartisan point of consensus, even: Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, and Rep. Matt Gaetz all condemned the plan. (Yesterday, though, news broke that Simpson had approved of plans to give some state forest land to a golf developer.)

• The politics of paradise: The golf-or-nature debate hits on one of the challenges in Florida, or anywhere people move for sunshine and beauty: It’s the paradisical nature of the place that draws so many new residents, and that influx cranks up the economy. But as more and more people come into paradise, it feels less and less nice.

• Access matters: The initiative’s core idea—that people should get to use their parks—is sound, of course, but it has to be balanced against an effort to preserve undeveloped habitat. (The mission of Florida’s state parks includes “preserving, interpreting, and restoring natural and cultural resources.”) I like the suggestion of conservationist J.P. Brooker: Rather than building fancy amenities, why not make more parks? Only one new park has opened in the past 15 years, he points out—a period in which 5 million new people have moved into Florida.

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Recommendations

🐕 The Washington Post offers a thorough update on the status of N.C.’s red wolves—including the efforts of an anonymous funder seeking to fund wildlife crossings near the refuge that is their sanctuary and the release of a “conflict assessment” detailing varied views on the species.

⛰️ A new podcast, How Wild, explores the idea of wilderness by examining, episode by episode, the different attributes defined in the Wilderness Act. What more do I need to say? Highly recommended.

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In rotation:

📖 Kaveh Akbar: Martyr!

📻 Wishy: Triple Seven; Muscadine Bloodline: The Coastal Plain

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Roundup

⛺ Indigenous groups and Republicans unite in opposing wilderness designations in Florida’s Big Cypress Preserve (National Parks Traveler)

🧑🏾‍🌾️ Developers canceled plans for an industrial grain elevator in a rare, largely untouched stretch along the Mississippi (ProPublica); now can the region be preserved as a National Historic Landmark District (WWNO)?

🌲 Restoring Appalachia’s “sky islands” (Sierra)

🌊 Three-quarters of Hurricane Debby’s damage—$10 billion worth—hit communities where no flood insurance was required (The Hill)

🐊 The fight to protect Alabama’s precious delta (AP)

👷🏼 A lavender farm atop an old West Virginia coal mine (Ambrook)

🦀 Blue crabs besiege Italy, reshaping culinary traditions (Washington Post)

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