I’m a DeSantis critic, but give him credit for important Florida land deal | Mark Woods

I'm a DeSantis critic, but give him credit for important Florida land deal | Mark Woods

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In the last year, I’ve frequently been critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis, his staff and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection when it comes to actually protecting the environment of Florida.
When the state tried to quietly fast-track plans to build golf courses and hotels on some of our award-winning state parks last summer, I may have even suggested that “protection” should be replaced with “destruction” or, if we didn’t want to change all DEP letterheads, “plundering.”
And then, as if not learning a lesson from the state parks saga, we saw something similar play out involving Northeast Florida last month — with a plan to quietly push through a land swap involving the Guana River Wildlife Management Area blowing up amidst swift and bipartisan backlash.
So it may come as a surprise to read me saying this: DeSantis deserves credit for what he and his Cabinet did last week without a lot of fanfare.
They approved using nearly $118 million of Florida Forever money to push across the finish line a years-long effort to conserve more than 78,000 privately owned acres west of Jacksonville.

This is a huge deal, by some measures likely the largest conservation deal ever in this part of the state.
It’s not just the amount of land involved — about 120 square miles in Baker, Union and Bradford counties — but the significance of it.
The acquisitions — easements that allow the land owners to continue agricultural operations but limit potential development — close the final major gap in the Ocala-to-Osceola Wildlife Corridor, a 100-mile network of public and private lands connecting two national forests.
Allison DeFoor, CEO and president of the North Florida Land Trust, and his team deserve credit for staying on top of this for years and brokering a deal that includes more than 61,000 acres owned by forestry giant Weyerhaeuser.
“The reason this became a great white whale for me and my team is that when you look at the map, this thing was the rock in the middle of the road of the entire corridor from Ocala not just to Osceola, but up into the Okefenokee,” DeFoor said. “This is a huge, multi-state landscape of wildlife conservation.”
Better than failed Guana land swapRemember the pitch for the Guana land swap? The Upland LLC tried to acquire 600 coveted acres in St. Johns County, saying it would trade more than 3,000 acres scattered around the state — and such a swap would help the state connect conservation land.
At the time, I wrote that while that’s an admirable goal, there are other ways to do it. Better ways.
This is a good example.
First and foremost, it didn’t involve giving up a prime piece of public land. Beyond that, it costs significantly less to establish conservation easements than to buy land outright, which made it possible to acquire such a large swath of land. And this keeps that land on the tax rolls, while preserving rural jobs, communities and the environment.
“This is not an either-or,” DeFoor said, “it’s a yes-and.”
DeFoor credits legislators from Northeast Florida — particularly former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner and former Florida Senator Rob Bradley — for laying the foundation and the governor and his cabinet for finishing it.
When the acquisition was announced, the NFLT sent out a press release with a quote from DeFoor: “The only appropriate response is a big thank you to Gov. DeSantis, the Cabinet and Legislature for their leadership and the landowners for their vision and willingness. This will both protect the environment and keep the land in agriculture. We were honored to assist, and ready for more. Now or never.”
Never easy in FloridaOf course, this being Florida, it’s never as simple as taking two steps in the same direction.
Just a year ago state lawmakers were patting themselves on the back for unanimously passing a law that created a big source of funding for land preservation: the Seminole Gaming Compact.
Sports betting continues — as do efforts to complete the entire Florida Wildlife Corridor, a statewide initiative that includes the O2O — but now that preservation funding is going elsewhere after lawmakers voted to repeal something they were seemingly so proud of a year ago.
And while lawmakers passed legislation this year to protect state parks from a repeat of last summer, they also turned around and proposed spending just $15 million on much-needed improvements to state parks — compared with $37 million proposed by the governor.
Yes, as Craig Pittman noted in a piece for the Florida Phoenix, DeSantis was “for once playing the good guy in a park scenario.”
Not that this — along with the recent land acquisition and the fact that the state has invested more than $1.4 billion in land conservation through the Florida Forever Program since 2019 — means the governor doesn’t deserve that past criticism.
But it all begs a question: What will his environmental legacy be when he leaves office in a year and a half?
It's complicated, to say the least.
When I posed that question to Pittman, who has been writing about his home state for decades and recently swung through our area to promote his latest book (“Welcome to Florida: True Tales from America’s Most Interesting State”), he said that anyone who labels this governor an environmentalist hasn’t been paying attention.
“Ron DeSantis has done a fine job spending taxpayer dollars to preserve land from all the other stuff he's been doing,” Pittman said. “It's too bad he wouldn't ever say no to his developer buddies, his polluter pals and the fossil fools who want to keep burning fossil fuels, because that will be the biggest part of his legacy.”
I’d say there’s a lot of truth in that. I’d also say that while DeSantis is a lame duck governor, he has some important decisions ahead — like the future of the Rodman Dam and Ocklawaha River.
The legislature passed a budget that includes $6.25 million to end a decades-long debate, breach an aging dam that was built as part of the never-completed Cross Florida Barge Canal, and begin restoring the Ocklawaha.
Now it's in the governor's hands. Will he veto that spending? Or will he be the governor who began the restoration of the St. Johns River's largest tributary, a river once renowned as one of the most beautiful waterways in America?
The recent conservation deal doesn't erase all the past criticism of the governor. But I'll gladly say he deserves credit. And I'd be happy to say that again.
mwoods@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4212