Members of the public had some sharp criticism Thursday night for a proposal from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission staff about how to offset future development impacts in the protected Split Oak Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area (WEA).
The Central Florida Expressway Authority wants to build a toll road through part of Split Oak Forest, but first, FWC would need to remove some of the forest’s 30-year-old conservation easement protections. FWC commissioners are set to decide whether to do so at the agency’s May 1 meeting.
Following a roughly 10-minute presentation Thursday, FWC staff broke meeting attendees into small groups, inviting them to share feedback on what FWC’s proposed mitigation package “may have missed.”
“What you missed are the voices of the people who actually use this land every day,” said area resident Emily Stewart. “We continue to say what's needed for our community, and we're ignored.”
Stewart and other members of Friends of Split Oak said Thursday that FWC staff have ignored their multiple requests to meet about the pending project and the many concerns they’ve expressed, over several years, about its expected cost to wildlife and public health.
FWC staff stationed at each small group took record of the public’s feedback on laptops and giant notepads, saying it would be “consolidated,” and shared with FWC commissioners to help inform their pending decision.
According to FWC’s management plan for Split Oak, the area’s protective conservation easements are “perpetual” — lasting forever — unless any portions are deemed surplus lands “no longer needed for conservation purposes.” But no part of Split Oak is “surplus,” per the management plan.
In exchange for the release of 160 acres of conservation easements on Split Oak, CFX is offering FWC 1,550 acres of nearby land, plus funding to restore and manage it. But attendee Katrina Stephenson argued that “acreage is moot,” because it wouldn't serve the same purpose as the land currently protected within Split Oak.
Originally, Split Oak itself was mitigation land, a receiving site for gopher tortoises displaced by development elsewhere. Now, those gopher tortoises might be displaced again, if CFX paves its way through the forest.
“The main species that we were trying to protect cannot migrate … They can't get over a 300 foot wide canal,” Stephenson said, pointing on a map where a large canal cuts through the land CFX is offering up.
“Not all land is created equal,” Stephenson said. “We cannot replace what is currently existing on Split Oak with the land that is offered … It's not like habitat, and it can’t be made like habitat.”
Some attendees Thursday said with Split Oak’s “perpetual” protections on the table for removal, they aren't sure how to trust FWC to protect conservation land, moving forward.
“Why, now, should we believe you, when you already showed us that you don't have the integrity to stand up to what you say?” Osceola County resident Gerry Frawley asked FWC staff at his small group.
“I hope we can do something to earn your trust back one day,” an FWC staffer said in response.
Friends of Split Oak President Valerie Anderson said her members’ concerns with removing any of Split Oak’s protections go far beyond this one, specific forest itself. The concern is what kind of precedent that move would set for other conservation lands in Florida, she said.
“We don't want to lose the ability to protect conservation land from incursions: including, but not limited to, toll roads and other development,” Anderson said.
Following FWC’s meeting in Osceola County, another update in the Split Oak saga unfolded Friday morning when a Ninth Circuit judge ruled Orange County’s 2020 charter amendment affirming Split Oak’s protected status did not violate state law, contrary to Osceola County’s complaint.
