Florida’s population and development are projected to double in the next fifty years. 1000 Friends of Florida’s new Florida 2060 report raises the question of what Florida will look like when the population goes from today’s sprawling 18 million or so residents, to 36 million in 2060?
In our central Florida region growth will be explosive and vitually all natural landscapes will be fragmented or consumed by urbanization. It’s likely that there won’t be public monies available to buy enough conservation lands to sustain native ecosystems, and preserve our quality of life.
Mary Dawson, founder of the new Sustaining Community Lands, Inc. in Martin County, came up to Vero Beach today to share a story about an alternative model for conserving land as we develop. Building on the work of the Sonoran Insitute of Tucson, and the Liberty Prairie Conservancy of Lake County, Illinois, she told our Conservation and Rural Lands Group about the Community Land Conservancy (CLC) Model. Also called Community Stewardship Organizations (CSOs), these nonprofits are established when a developer is trying to set aside significant environmental land as part of the development process.
Lands within the development are set aside for conservation or open space, and the developer requires a transfer fee to be paid for the benefit of the CSO each time a home is sold in the development. The funds from transfer fees and other sources available to nonprofits (grants, memberships, donations, etc.) are used to hire professional scientists and land managers to maintain and/or restore the conservation land, and to conduct public outreach programs to promote conservation in the community. Such projects work best if the developments are situated within a larger landscape containing natural resources worthy of protection.
Conservation is directly paid for by development in this approach, and stewardship is local and nongovernmental. We welcome Mary’s vision, and hope that it offers one more tool in the toolkit we’ll need to build our future.
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