March 19, 2024

PEOPLE -- PROFIT -- PLANET

Sustainable Florida Best Practices Awards Program

Sponsored by The Council for Sustainable Florida

| 10/1/2007


People

Profit

Planet
Legacy Best Practice Award

Babcock Ranch

Babcock Ranch is a 65-mile environmental corridor stretching from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf Coast through Lee and Charlotte counties. It is an amazingly beautiful working and natural landscape. Babcock Ranch includes the 17,700-acre Telegraph Swamp, with incredibly valuable groundwater resources and vast timber and ranch lands that provide important habitat for panther, black bear and other protected species.

Kitson and Partners
Kitson and Partners, along with state and local leaders, protected more than 74,000 acres. [Photo: JohnMoranPhoto.com]


Many consider this the “missing link” – an environmental corridor of 91,000 acres stretching from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf Coast. When the Babcock family members wanted to sell the company to the State of Florida an innovative solution was needed.

Syd Kitson approached the family with an ambitious plan. Kitson & Partners would purchase the company and sell 80% of the ranch – 74,000 acres – for permanent preservation. The State of Florida and Lee County joined together to purchase the lands. The Legislature appropriated General Revenue funds – so that Florida Forever Funds were not impacted. Existing cattle and eco-tourism operations will continue – generating operating revenue to manage the Preserve. Kitson and Partners donated $3 million dollars and land to Florida Gulf Coast University to establish an environmental education program.

With assistance and partnership with the Lee and Charlotte County governments and residents, the Department of Community Affairs and Environmental Protection and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission – along with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services – plans for the remaining land were created to permit future sustainable development featuring high density with great design featuring a town center, high school and shopping centers.

The state’s conservation land acquisition program partner with the private sector provides permanent protection. It provides a template for future efforts that would stretch limited taxpayer dollars, preserve pristine conservation lands and allow the development community to build on the land that is most suitable.

What can you do?

  • Provide incentives to encourage protection of natural and working landscapes.
  • Use market-based tools to encourage private sector
    conservation.
  • Offer opportunity to explore transfer of development rights options.
  • Promote the development and use of a Cooperative Conservation Blueprint for Florida.

Tags: Environment

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