Our State is Not Your Rental Property
By John and Rod Petersen
If you aren’t aware, there is currently proposals for Florida to develop nine of its State Parks with new amenities under Ron DeSantis’, “Great Outdoors Initiative.” This seems like a wonderful addition to the State Parks of Florida, helping to update, attract more visitors, and get people outdoors again… until you read further into the proposals themselves. These proposals are simply disguised as a way for developers to begin turning the more than 800,000 acres of land in Florida’s 75 State Parks into luxury, high-end beach resorts for the rich (Fox 13 Tampa Bay).
The State Parks under threat are:
Anastasia State Park
Oleta River State Park
Johnathan Dickinson State Park
Eula Johnson State Park
Camp Hellen State Park
Topsail Hill Preserve
Hillsborough River State Park
Honeymoon Island State Park
Florida’s State Parks attract more than 32 million visitors each year (Florida State Parks) with us and many others being some of those people. These Parks are a wonderful way to preserve the natural beauty of the state. Much of Old Florida has disappeared due to increased development, habitat loss, draining marshlands, etc.
This “Great Outdoors Initiative” is not what it may seem. Instead of using the money for much-needed maintenance, boardwalks, trails, or interpretative centers for guests, it is being used for 18-hole golf courses, pickleball courts, and disc golf (Florida Department of Environmental Protection).
These amenities are NOT what the parks are about. Visiting the parks is a way to disconnect from our day-to-day lives and see the outdoors in its natural state. This level of development will destroy much of what these State Parks are, the ability to see Florida in the most untouched way you still can in 2024.
As development continues at a rapid pace, we must be sure to stay vigilant of our State’s natural resources and parks as they will come under more and more pressure to be developed.
For example, from 2010 to 2022 Miami-Dade County grew an average of 0.5% year after year (USA Facts). That is the entire county, not just the city of Miami.
As the population of cities and counties rise in Florida, more and more land is being lost to development.
This problem is not just limited to Miami-Dade County or the Atlantic Coast, as Tampa has grown almost 200,000 residents in the last five years and is projected a constant growth of almost another 200,000 by 2030 (Macrotrends).
Populations of cities will continue to rise around the Sunshine State, and we understand that. However, greedily developing the last remnants of natural Florida would rob people of the opportunity to truly experience the outdoors as they were meant to be. So, join us in our stance against the “Great Outdoors Initiative” and make your voice to be heard, to keep our state parks wild and free.
There are previous examples of lawmakers destroying the natural beauty of the State and treading on the rights of the public to these lands. For a long time, Florida waged a political war over the public's rights to beaches and beach access.
Unfortunately, the beach access have been privatized for some time now. The effects of the private beaches can be seen from Panama City Beach down to Tampa. The average Florida resident has no more right to their own beaches due to the overcrowding of tourists, and the privatized control of the high tide line. (Surfrider)
Another example is the Florida Pipeline. Which has been attributed as the direct cause of the drying up of the Everglades. We will cover the Pipeline and its larger issues to the state in a later article.
One final example is the loss of our native flora and fauna from the state. The American Flamingo is the unfortunate result of unchecked development and habitat loss in Florida. Almost pushed to the brink of extinction in the late 1900s, the wild American Flamingo is now a rare sight on the US coastline (American Bird Conservancy). However, you wouldn’t notice, as all across the state flamingo branded hotels, stuffed animals, stickers, t-shirts, and lawn ornaments would make you think they were a common sight.
There are other animal species that will be affected by this rapid development of our state parks such as the Gopher Tortoise, the Wood Ibis, the American Alligator, and the American Crocodile just to name a few (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation).
Should these animals pay the price for the over-development and destruction of Florida? Is a Gopher Tortoise, a keystone species in the Longleaf Pine ecosystem, worth less than your pickleball courts and hotels. Would you rather your children go into a gift shop in a State Park to purchase a stuffed animal Gopher Tortoise but never actually get to see one, simply because you let the laws go into effect that pushed it to an endangered/extinct species?
In conclusion, there is a proposal to develop the Florida State Parks. As it stands, these will add unnecessary additions to the State Parks that will detrimentally impact on both the State Parks we love and the animals that reside there. There is not much left of the old Florida to go around. We must do everything we can as citizens of the State of Florida to protect and conserve the natural beauty of Florida. Remember, these State Parks are the property of the citizens of Florida, and not the property of the government. It is our duty to make sure we protect and conserve these State Parks not only for ourselves, but for future generations to come.
