Preserving natural Florida

American Forests, Wntr, 2003 by Doug Alderson

It was an improbable task. Travel to the heart of north Florida's largest city and find wilderness. With maps in hand and some vague directions, I headed into Jacksonville past a skyline of tall buildings, turning before the wide St. Johns River, the area's dominant spot of nature. My directions said take congested Lem Turner Road, although as I passed fast food stands, pawnshops, and liquor stores, I wondered just how wild my quarry could be.

I crossed the Ribault River and turned west onto a narrow road that carried me through one of the city's older neighborhoods. Two blocks shy of the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, I struck pay dirt.

A long, green swath of wilderness beckoned, and I eagerly began working my way through a tangle of muscadine vines and palmetto, beneath a hammock of arching live oaks. A black snake--a harmless racer--dropped noisily from a low sable palm branch and disappeared into the underbrush. I smelled the brackish Ribault before I could really see it. Being low tide, the exposed mud flats were exuding their characteristically distinctive sulfur-like odor.

Determined to get a river view, I climbed a high bank and looked across windswept spartina grass. Down below, tiny fiddler crabs raced along the mud, the males each waving an oversized pincer as minnows and larger fish riffled the water's surface. Majestic great egrets, stark white against a backdrop of greens, browns, and blues, stood like motionless ballet dancers along the water's edge. An osprey whistled and an endangered wood stork soared past. The place was alive!

Picture school kids using this 35-acre living science project as an environmental science classroom--squishing their toes in mud, handling dip nets and seines, and studying the rich marine life--and you're starting to think like Jacksonville these days.

Tracts like the Ribault, pronounced "Ree-bolt" with a French accent, form the heart of what is known as the Jacksonville Preservation Project, an ambitious plan to protect choice parcels of the city's remaining undeveloped land. The project was launched in January 1999, when Mayor John Delaney announced his goal of raising more than $300 million to preserve wilderness in a city that grew to 841 square miles with its 1986 merger with Duval County. That merger made Jacksonville the largest U.S. city in terms of land area.

"We can use taxpayer money in one of two ways," Delaney said in unveiling his plan, which he says came to him one day while fishing. "We can either expand our roadways, which will only encourage uncontrolled growth and create 12-lane parking lots on our roadways. Or we can have the vision to preserve large tracts of land now and give our citizens the opportunity to experience these unspoiled natural greenspaces. When faced with the option of a generic strip mall on every corner or a beautiful green park for families to enjoy, I think the choice is a natural one."

As an unintended consequence, the project soon put Jacksonville at number one among cities for protected parkland (57,373 acres) and propelled it into the top 10 in terms of percentage of acreage devoted to parks.

The first $21 million came from the city's coffers, the next $50 million from the S2.2 billion Better Jacksonville Plan, a voter-approved referendum held in 2000. Citizens voted to raise sales tax by half a cent to help fund growth management, environmental projects, transportation needs, park rehabilitation, and economic development. The remaining money came from such sources as the state's $3 billion Florida Forever land acquisition trust fund and the municipal electric utility for key land purchases near electric and water utility properties.

Two nonprofits, The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, were signed on as intermediaries while agreements were made with the National Park Service and the Florida Park Service to manage large tracts purchased near or contiguous to their holdings.

The preservation project has a multi-fold purpose: manage growth, protect environmentally endangered lands, improve water quality and increase public access to natural areas. Because the project helps contain sprawl in many outlying areas, the city saves money by avoiding expensive infrastructure costs for road widening, schools, sewers, and social services. Cities in Florida and elsewhere are taking a keen interest in the approach.

"I drove all over my area looking for a suitable piece of property to be included in the preservation project," says Gwen Yates, a city councilwoman whose district includes much of the Ribault River, "and I found one right under my nose, in my own neighborhood." Her proposed tract was quickly included by the mayor's 11-member citizen advisory board, which evaluates nominations from landowners, citizens, conservation groups, and political leaders.

The Ribault River tract, an inner-city mini-wilderness with a towering century-old slash pine, met eligibility requirements for environmentally sensitive land that could provide public access to a scenic water body. Plus, the owner was a willing seller.