Enhancing Environmental Compatibility

Priority Actions:

Private Stewardship | New Thinking for the Millennium

NEW THINKING FOR THE MILLENNIUM:

Conclusion: Need to find ways to determine what agricultural activity, if any, can take place on public lands and what public lands, if any, can be leased or sold back to ag producers. This issue should be considered as a possible land management strategy and should be discussed by the Working Group as part of its land acquisition strategy.

Suggested Actions: Here are several ways in which these strategies might be carried out:

"Determine what if any Ag activity can take place on all public lands within the state, and ask for bids and management plans on same."

Strive to make public land management strategies as efficient and cost-effective as possible by allowing ag producers "to lease back or buy back existing public lands that are not critical to environmental protection."

Identified as a possible task for assistance from the Governor's Commission for the Everglades

Here's how:

Use the Florida Center for Environmental Studies' (CES) Grazing Lands Working Group as a model for recruiting and utilizing the skills and knowledge of ag producers and ranchers to assist in the management of state lands to allow for compatible management strategies that will accommodate environmental, recreation, timber harvesting and agricultural production objectives, where appropriate and without detracting from the ecological functions of the state's public lands.

Establish lease program through which government agencies "lease" land from private landowners to pay costs of establishing specific practices or paying for management services (21st Century sharecropping). Landowner continues to own and use land; government pays costs of specific actions that are implemented over duration of lease. (Also, see "Resource Conservation Agreement" concept under Priority Action 1, above.)

Recommendations:

Who: DEP, in cooperation with water management districts (WMDs) and DOACS.
What: Need prototype programs, developed by DEP in cooperation with WMDs and DOACS.

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