ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in an interview with News 6 that the commission’s recent agreement to lift conservation easements on protected land within Split Oak Forest will benefit the public in more ways than not.
As the Central Florida Expressway Authority seeks to build an extension of Osceola Parkway through Orange and Osceola counties, FWC commissioners on Wednesday voted 6-1 to release protections of 60 acres in Split Oak Forest in exchange for 1,550 acres of abutting conservation land and millions of dollars — in pledges and actuality — to maintain and improve the land. The vote followed years of organized opposition which seems to have only chipped away at an inevitable CFX project originally expected to impact some 160 acres of the protected land.
Speaking from Miami via Zoom with News 6, Barreto discussed the deal, addressed those opposed to it and offered several reasons why he thinks the agreement is the best way forward.
For example, Barreto said the commission has for years considered the possibility that CFX could threaten eminent domain to get the roadway built instead of making a deal that results in FWC gaining any conservation land at all, much less 1,550 acres of it.
“Although we’ve never been threatened by eminent domain, that’s been in the back of our mind, that CFX could just go in and and do eminent domain to take the property or go through a residential neighborhood. Although I think that path would have been years and years and a lot of litigation and so on and so forth, we just viewed this as a win-win for the environment and for the people and the public,” Barreto said.
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Recognizing those opposed to the deal, Barreto called them passionate, crediting such people and those like them for their efforts to keep public lands open to the public. In squarely addressing the opposition itself however, the chairman offered reassurance that he and his peers believe the deal is what’s necessary and appropriate.
“This is an opportunity for us, as managers, to look at this and to say, ‘Hey, if this is going to happen, let’s make something really good out of this.’ So, what did we do? We got 1,550 more acres available to the public. Now we’re going to manage them, we’re going to rehabilitate them, we’re going to get them open to the public, we have an extra $18 million to buy more land,” he said. “...We feel this is a very big win-win for the public. Now, I know that the folks who are against it don’t view it that way now, but I think in the future, they will.”
Barreto then offered a self criticism. According to him, FWC’s presentation used older aerial photos that do not properly convey the scope of expansion happening just outside of Split Oak Forest.
“If you took an aerial view today, what we are showing on our screen was an old picture. It should have been — there was a high school that’s been built, there’s big box stores, there’s houses, you know, right up to Split Oak. I mean, there’s more housing, more rooftops that are coming that way, so this whole area is being built out, it is built out, and I think that’s one thing that we kind of missed the mark, we probably should have showed that a little bit better,” Barreto said, contextualizing FWC’s position on balancing nature with population growth by stating his people have little-to-no purview of the latter.
“We don’t vote on zoning, we don’t vote on housing developments, we don’t vote on what gets developed and what doesn’t get developed. We’re land managers of public land and we often look for opportunities to create more land open to the public that is properly managed, and in this case that’s what we’ve done,” he said.
We asked the chairman what comes next, specifically about the timeline for finalizing the transfer.
Barreto said that CFX will vote next week on the package FWC commissioners approved Wednesday.
“If they vote in favor, then we move forward. We move forward with amending the easement and then work out contracts, get monies, receive the land, come up with a management plan, start rehabilitating the land and getting it open to the public,” he said.
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