The Florida Senate passed Senate Bill 80 — one of two bills meant to prevent development in state parks. This bill deters initiatives similar to last summer, when Gov. Ron DeSantis' plans were leaked to expand recreation and lodging in state parks.
The state senate bill's counterpart — House Bill 209 — passed unanimously in mid-April.
Without legislation like SB 80 and HB 209, Florida residents would have short notices on changes to land use in parks, creating limited participation from the public.
The bill now advances to the Governor's desk.
Passing SB 80 would be a "great first step in really protecting our state parks," said Mary Keith, chair of the Tampa Audubon chapter's Conservation Committee. "There will still be work to do to assure funding and enforcement, but it will be another sign that the people of Florida really do want to keep their state parks as parks, for their native habitat and inhabitants, and that our legislature listened once again to their constituents."
Fierce backlash in August
Back in August, nine state parks were the focus of a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) announcement on the launch of the "2024-25 Great Outdoors Initiative," which included adding golf courses, luxury lodges and disc golf courses to these public lands.
The initiative sparked widespread protest, and it was rescinded in a week.
"It was one of the most exciting things that I've seen in my life last summer, to see the public response to the proposal to put the hotels and the golf courses in the parks," said Eric Draper, the former director of the Florida Park Service. "That enthusiasm, of course, continues to this day. I did not expect to see those kinds of big rallies outside the parks."
Floridians across the state planned these rallies when they realized how development would impact wildlife in the parks.
Santa Rosa Beach's Topsail Hill Preserve State Park is one of the few undeveloped places in the entire Florida Panhandle. It's a spot where migratory birds can rest from their journeys in a maritime hammock where the forest meets the shore. The governor's initiative last summer could've changed that.
DeSantis' plans included razing a scrubby oak forest in northeast Florida, where ospreys and eagles fly high, for a proposed hotel in Anastasia State Park. And over at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, the largest state park in southeast Florida where blue-feathered scrub jays inhabit the skies over the highest point on the state's east coast, flattening dunes to build a golf course would become a reality. At Hillsborough River State Park, facilities for pickleball and disc golf were under consideration.
"When someone talks about doing something in a specific state park — or a forest or the Everglades," Draper said, "I can imagine standing in the sand, standing next to the surf, standing with the water up to my knees."
Enter Senate Bill 80 and House Bill 209
In response to what happened in August, two bills began making their way through Tallahassee. The State Park Preservation Act, or SB 80, was proposed by Sen. Gayle Harrell (R-Stuart). It would protect Florida's state parks from this kind of development. An identical bill, HB 209, was filed in the House by State Rep. John Snyder (R-Stuart).
During an Environment and Natural Resources Committee meeting in February, Harrell described the components of SB 80. It sought to define the function and management of Florida's state parks – more specifically, how parks should be conservation-based.
It would allow building of rustic cabins, education centers and archaeological excavations, Harrell added. The bill would also require transparency, including a 30-day notice for changes made to parks, the need for electronic copies of these notices and mandatory input from an advisory panel. It also stipulates that by December, necessary restoration to existing park facilities and similar restoration goals would have to be set in place for the next decade.
In its introduction among senators, Harrell defined the purpose of the bill as one to better involve conservationists and public perspectives on any management of public lands. There was 100% bipartisan agreement among the committee that it should advance.
"I think legislators heard Floridians loud and clear last year that caring about state parks is part of who we are as Floridians, and it's a bipartisan issue," said Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida, the oldest statewide conservation organization in the state. "The question is how broadly to enshrine that legislatively."
Legislators tend to back off once these issues make the news, said University of Florida professor of ecotourism Taylor Stein, who has studied the benefits of participating in recreation outdoors.
"There's nothing renewable," Stein said, "about a golf course or pickleball court."
Conservationists engage legislators
Seventy organizations signed a letter penned by 1,000 Friends of Florida in February, asking legislators to fix specific loopholes in the two bills.
"In any bill for any issue on either side," said Haley Busch, the organization's communications and outreach director, "you want to see your language as tight as possible so that someone looking to get around the bill can't do so."
Busch works to bring the next generation of Floridians into the nonprofit's work of connecting community planning decisions to environmental impacts. She also supports the advocacy team as it engages in Tallahassee's legislative sessions.
Audubon Florida also talked with both Harrell and Snyder to strengthen the bills' language. In early March, during the Natural Resources & Disasters Subcommittee's first reading of HB 209, Snyder amended the bill.
Other proposed amendments were shot down. At the Fiscal Policy Committee meeting on April 22, Florida State Sen. Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota) proposed an amendment to the bill that was rejected. According to Tampa Audubon's Mary Keith, the dissent cited vague language such as the phrase "substantial harm," which could weaken the bill to allow hotels, tennis courts and pickleball courts if they were put on previously disturbed lands.
After an amendment on April 30, the Senate passed the House's bill.
Additionally, conservationists were concerned that the amendment would place the burden of proof back on individuals instead of creating a concrete standard for prohibited activity on park land.
If the bills had not passed, these conservation organizations would continue to fight one proposal at a time.
"If you care about water, you should be caring about what urban stormwater policies look like in your comprehensive plan," Busch said. "If you care about keeping the rural rural, well, that's directly tied to land use changes and urban sprawl policy."
"It's fun to make the connection between any environmental issue you care about and how your local government, your county or your city's planning efforts, really are interconnected with that."
Both bills in the House and Senate provide opportunities for the public near the impacted site to have their concerns heard in-person, Wraithmell said. She called the 30-day notice "a good sweet spot." Too much longer, she said, and concern or attention could end up shifting; too much shorter, and there isn't enough time to engage.
When Keith from the Tampa Audubon first found out about the plans to develop Hillsborough River State Park last summer, she said she drove to the state park areas to scope out for herself what would be impacted by the proposed pickleball and tennis courts. The pickleball court was proposed for a spot where Audubon volunteers monitor nesting colonies of wading birds.
Keith said she has seen negative effects at a different colony that she monitors — an area in which a basketball court and tennis courts had previously been converted into several pickleball courts.
"I can hardly hear the birds, and a whole island full of nesting baby birds, screaming for 'Mom, mom, mom, food, food, food,' gets pretty loud," Keith said. "If you go to the state parks for serenity, it's gone. It's just going to be ping pong, tick tock, tick tock."
According to Stein, the immediate impact of development would affect state park visitors – the longer-term impact becomes a threat to every state park and the very idea of conservation.
"Those are our most protected lands in Florida," Stein said. "If they can do that, nowhere in Florida is off limits."
Wraithmell encouraged Floridians to make their voices heard to be sure they are effectively represented in their local government.
"Build that relationship because they are representing you," she said.
Busch also noted that having staff take phone calls all day will frustrate legislators, as they'll be unable to work on other issues. "If you're busying up that elected official's staff and their team, you're busying up their life as well," Busch said.
Though the bills will still need the public's support to be properly enforced in the future, Keith knows this is a step worth celebrating.
"Legislators heard the citizens and heard that we want parks for habitat, not hotels," she said. "When we get enough people speaking out, loud and clear, we can be heard."
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