Florida Forever: Public Land Conservation

Florida Forever in 2021 and Beyond

Protecting natural lands is necessary for the “ecological health and open space needs” of our state, but the job of acquiring those lands is not done.

In 2020, $100 million was dedicated to Florida Forever acquisitions, and TNC is a vital partner in securing rare and sensitive lands for protection through the Florida Forever program.

TNC will continue to support and encourage funding of Florida Forever. And while the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Florida Forever funding in 2021, our partnerships with private landowners have played a huge role in our land protection work.

50 Years of Protecting Land in Florida

The Florida Chapter of TNC has helped protect many of Florida’s premier conservation lands over the last 50 years, especially with the help over the last two decades of Florida’s revolutionary land conservation programs: Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever.

The success of these two programs has made fast-growing Florida a national leader in conservation. Looking back, TNC takes pride in the role Florida Chapter staff and trustees played in making state-funded conservation land acquisition a reality. 

As the effort to publicly fund conservation gained momentum more than 20 years ago, the plan being outlined seemed outrageous. Gov. Bob Martinez’s Commission on the Future of Florida’s Environment was holding meetings around the state attended by citizens from all walks of life. State agencies had submitted lists of the lands they saw as critical to acquire. Floridians made it clear they wanted to protect their environmental future by acquiring these must-have properties.

Longtime TNC Florida Trustee Joe Hixon was part of that exciting heyday and is thankful about how far-sighted the designers were, including former TNC Florida Director John Flicker and fellow Trustee Jim Swann.

“That we decided to ask for $300 million a year for 10 years—$3 billion—was very shocking because it was so far beyond anything we could conceive of at the time,” said Hixon, a member of the governor’s commission. The commission recommended that protecting those lands was necessary for the “ecological health and open space needs” for our state. The single most effective way to do that, the commission said, was to substantially increase the level of funding and purchase those lands now.

“It helped tremendously that we had a specific funding source and didn’t take from general revenue,” Hixon said about how the program named Preservation 2000 was born. The novel funding method—taking a small percentage of the money collected from real estate transactions called documentary stamps—continued in the follow-up to P2000 called Florida Forever. It was created in 2001 to again provide $3 billion for conservation over 10 years. Florida Forever was reauthorized in 2008 for $300 million annually for another 10 years.

Under P2000 and Florida Forever, Florida has protected more than 2.4 million acres of land. By borrowing today and using longterm documentary stamp tax revenue to pay future debt obligations, these programs have allowed Floridians to protect the most important, most threatened parcels today while providing that future Floridians share the cost.

TNC's Role in Public Land Protection

Over the years, TNC has recommended parcels for protection to the state and has scientifically documented the species found there. TNC has also worked collaboratively with the state under both programs to acquire hundreds of key parcels, securing options on the land for purchase with state funds.

Hixon and others are hopeful that the legislature will continue to fund Florida Forever. We need to tie our “accomplishments” together and connect large areas already protected, he said, avoiding the “island effect” when conservation lands are separated by development that is so harmful to species.

“The people of Florida and the government deserve huge credit for what’s been done, doing more than even the federal government has done in the same amount of time,” said Hixon. The Nature Conservancy will continue to support and encourage funding of Florida Forever.