State officials are adding almost 119 square miles of North Florida woodlands west of Jacksonville to a conservation artery designed to help shield the region’s wildlife from encroaching development.
The agreements to protect about 76,000 privately-owned acres in Baker, Union and Bradford counties are being celebrated by conservation advocates as big steps in realizing a years-old dream.
“This is a truly historic pair of acquisitions, not only in size but they are the key pieces in the O2O,” North Florida Land Trust President and CEO Allison DeFoor said in a release about the addition of properties in the Ocala to Osceola Wildlife Corridor.
That route, commonly called the O2O, is part of the even larger Florida Wildlife Corridor intended to permanently preserve wildlife habitat across the state.
Areas marked in red and blue were part of a major land-conservation agreement approved June 10 by Gov. Ron DeSantis and other members of the state’s Internal Improvement Trust Fund.
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Meeting as trustees of the state’s Internal Improvement Trust Fund, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Cabinet approved spending $117.9 million June 10 to buy conservation easements that will pay the owners of two large tracts to surrender development rights on their land.
DeSantis called the conservation deals “a major milestone for the Florida Wildlife Corridor.”
The owner of the larger property, forestry giant Weyerhaeuser, began trying to reach an easement deal five years ago, signing up the land trust to help find state or federal funds to permanently conserve 50,000 acres of its woodlands.
A longleaf pine forest containing old-growth trees covers much of Big Pine Preserve in Marion County within the Ocala-to-Osceola Corridor, part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Lands the state approved for conservation June 10 increased the part of the corridor protected from development.
The deal approved this month goes farther, authorizing $93.6 million for an easement covering 61,389 acres of Weyerhaeuser Forest Holdings land.
The company can continue growing and harvesting trees but must permanently give up any rights to put up new buildings, dig commercial water wells, mine, extract oil or gas or otherwise develop the site.
The other easement, priced at $24,3 million, covers 14,743 acres owned by Blackbottom Holdings, LLC, a company with an address in Lawtey.
The easement area, which is in Baker and Bradford counties, borders the state’s Raiford Wildlife Management Area and Weyerhaeuser’s land and “provides a critical landscape linkage” between Camp Blanding and Jennings State Forest to the east, a report circulated to DeSantis and the Cabinet said.
Blackbottom’s land is habitat for wildlife including black bears, red cockaded woodpeckers and bald eagles, the report said.
Like the Weyerhaeuser site, the easement bars new homebuilding or commercial or industrial activity on the land, and adds that the restriction also covers “swine, dairy and poultry operations.” Planting non-native plants will also be forbidden.
The report said Blackbottom’s easement allows drilling six new wells “for agriculture purposes” and maintaining five watering holes, limiting those to a combined 35 acres.
While the owners can continue working their lands for agriculture or tree-farming, both easements forbid creating mitigation banks, where owners of remote tracts sometimes collect payments for protecting and improving land as compensation for construction being done on other properties.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Baker County land deals part of ‘major milestone’ for wildlife corridor