On the Conservation Front: A Blueprint for Advocacy Emerges

It’s not often that Florida’s wilds get a win. It’s even rarer to get several, in a row. The winning streak for advocacy began in early 2025, when the legislature passed the State Park Preservation Act.

It was followed closely by a bill to prohibit oil drilling along the Apalachicola River. And then on the heels of these legislative wins, the public stood up to stop a land swap involving state-owned lands in the Guana River Preserve in St. Johns County.

For anyone interested in preserving Florida’s natural lands and waters, reflecting on these recent successes reveals key components:

• The issue needs to be local and personal. You need an organizer. You need the expertise of established non-profit groups with extensive institutional knowledge. You need public support. And finally, if you’ve got the first four, you’ve got a chance with the fifth, bringing aboard local lawmakers.

State Park Preservation Act

In August 2024, plans were revealed for hotels, pickleball courts and golf courses to be built in several of the most popular state parks in Florida, places like Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County, Anastasia State Park in St. Johns County and Topsail Hill Preserve State Park in Walton County. This so-called “Great Outdoors Initiative” was leaked by James Gaddis, a state employee.

Within hours, a resistance movement was born. Having 16 parks from around the state included in this initiative made it local for just about anyone living in Florida. And the secretive, fast-tracked nature on how the state was rolling out the plan to the public made it personal. There was an immediate and unprecedented visceral opposition to the plan.

“This was extremely personal for me,” said Jessica Namath of Tequesta, who grew up near Jonathan Dickinson State Park. With no public organizing experience, the daughter of a famous NFL football player became the quarterback of the Protect Jonathan Dickinson State Park Facebook group, which grew to 48,700 people during the campaign.

Just a few months later, State Senator Gayle Harrell began writing legislation in preparation for the 2025 legislative session. That legislation would come to be known as the State Park Preservation Act. Harrell’s district incorporates Dickinson State Park; to date Harrell, by most assessments, had not been regarded as a champion of the environment. Here was her chance. Her office was quoted as saying they had never received as much response over a single issue before.

Public opposition to the development of state park lands remained throughout the 2025 session. In fact, when the bill stalled in legislative committees, as reported by James Call, USA Today Network, pro-park advocates produced more than 100,000 signatures opposed to a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson State Park alone. Continued pressure was critical, as towards the end of the session it appeared lawmakers were going to settle for a weakened bill which no longer specified which activities would be prohibited from being built in our state parks. Some key environmental groups felt that trying to amend the bill at that point might kill it, but Friends of the Everglades and Florida Springs Council were among those pushing for more. “Kudos to Stuart, Florida’s state Rep. John Snyder, who was receptive to improving the bill, and who got the strengthened State Park Preservation Act passed in a key House committee in April,” Eve Samples, Executive Director, of Friends of the Everglades, said.

“The battle to protect state parks was a defining moment for Florida — and the people won,” Samples said. “From anglers and birders to hikers and hunters, Floridians from every walk of life came together during the summer of 2024 to defend against short-sighted, exploitative development.” Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the State Park Preservation Act into law May 22, 2025.

Kill The Drill

In April 2024, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) quietly issued a “notice of intent” stating that they planned to give a drilling permit to Clearwater Land & Minerals to allow exploratory oil drilling in the floodplain of the Apalachicola River. Once the local community became aware of DEP’s plan there were immediate protests, an administrative challenge by the Apalachicola Riverkeeper and strong opposition from a bipartisan coalition of local lawmakers.

“It didn’t matter your political affiliation, how much money you make, what religion you were, if you were from our community you were opposed to the drilling, even exploratory drilling 30 miles upstream of the coast,” explained Capt. TJ Saunders, an inshore fishing guide in Apalachicola since 2012. “We have pristine flats fishing for redfish and trout in the spring, fall and winter. Putting a single oil well upstream of Apalachicola Bay would be like putting a ticking time bomb up there."

Following Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s administrative action filed in the spring of 2024, Judge Lawrence P. Stevenson held a three-day hearing in December 2024. Dozens of environmental groups commandeered the front entrance of the Florida DEP to protest the department’s decision to permit an exploratory oil well along the Apalachicola River.

The “Kill the Drill” coalition, led by non-profits Apalachicola Riverkeeper, Sierra Club and the Down River Project— plus more than 500 sign-waving citizens chanting “Stop the Drill”—made their position clear to anyone leaving the environmental agency’s building. At the end of the three-day hearing, Judge Stevenson told DEP to deny the oil drilling permit. It was a win, but not a victory. What those in the Kill the Drill coalition really wanted is a state law banning any future drilling in the Apalachicola River Basin. And after months of outreach and grassroots efforts, residents near the Apalachicola River Basin finally have legislation preventing oil drilling in their backyard.

Due to the tireless work of thousands, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers (led by Representative Jason Shoaf and Senator Corey Simon) passed unanimously House Bill 1143 and its companion Senate Bill 1300, which bans oil and gas drilling within any county in a Rural Area of Opportunity that is within 10 miles of a National Estuarine Research Reserve. Apalachicola River and Bay would be protected under the provision.

Gov. DeSantis signed the bill into law in late June, affirming a huge win for anglers and others who depend on a healthy Apalachicola watershed.

Save Guana Now

On May 15, 2025, I received a voicemail from Capt. Matt Chipperfield, of Jacksonville Beach, asking to speak with me, or someone at the magazine, about an urgent matter. Matt said he’d been making calls all morning and that the fate of one of our best inshore fisheries was at risk.

By the time I reached Matt, I was already reading online details about why he was calling: a crazy land swap idea involving 600 acres of state-owned land in the Guana River Wildlife Management Area in Northeast Florida.

This wasn’t the first time developers had come for land in the Guana Preserve. In 2018, they’d tried—unsuccessfully--to take the last remaining 100 acres of private land there out of a conservation easement.

If it weren’t for the recent uprising over the state’s effort to bring a massive 350-room hotel and golf course into nearby Anastasia State Park, who knows what would have happened.

On the heels of the state park deal, the Guana land swap didn’t stand a chance. “People went crazy, it went viral,” Matt told me in a followup call in June. On May 19, a law firm representing The Upland LLC, looking to trade 3,000 acres of private land—scattered across Florida—for 600 acres inside the protected Guana River Wildlife Management Area announced it was withdrawing its application for the land swap “due to public sentiment resulting from misinformation.”

State Rep. Kim Kendall, whose district includes Guana, celebrated the decision. Kendall indicated plans to introduce legislation for stronger protections in the future.

“It was definitely refreshing and reassuring to experience the collective swift action and groundswell of opposition that killed the grubby land grab and destruction of cherished public land at Guana,” Lisa Rinaman, St. Johns Riverkeeper, told me. “Our kids grew up exploring, fishing and hunting in Guana, so this threat was deeply personal to me as well as to many fast-acting others,” she said. In fewer than six days after the Guana land swap was made public, tens of thousands of petitions against the swap were collected, and the obscure corporation behind the proposed Guana swap pulled out.

A parallel drama played out in Florida’s Withlacoochee State Forest, as a golf course developer announced it was no longer pursuing a Florida Cabinet-approved land swap deal trading 324 acres in the State Forest for 841 acres of timberland in Levy County. It’s safe to say public outrage following strong investigative reporting in the Tampa Bay Times was a factor.

What’s Next?

“History is repeating itself in Florida. The era we’re living in looks a lot like the 1960s, when environmental threats were coming fast and furious,” commented Eve Samples of Friends of the Everglades, the advocacy group formed in 1969 by Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

James Call of the USA Today Network reported in the Tallahassee Democrat, “This display of political muscle by advocates of natural Florida was historic, according to environmental activists, elected officials, and academics. They compared it to the 1960s when Jupiter Island’s Nathaniel Reed convinced Gov. Claude Kirk to stop plans to cut the state in half with a cross-Florida barge canal. Reed also got Kirk to halt construction of a jetport in the Everglades.”

Make no mistake: Wins for nature don’t just happen. Battles like these are hard won by people standing up for our state and collectively owned lands. Individuals, organizations and yes, elected lawmakers, working together bring these victories home.

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• This article was featured in the August-September issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe.

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