Developing Florida State Parks 2024

 

 

Remember this: Let Nature Be.

Recently, I have become aware of the issues Florida residences are experiencing in regard to developing infrastructure in Florida State Parks for tourism and entertainment. 

Historically, when you consider the weather and subsequent flooding alone, it makes you wonder who came up with this idea? I know the need for money has everyone squeezing the soul out of a lemon, but this gives new anxiety to humankind's progression to a nature-less dystopian reality. 

The executive office of Govenor Ron Desantis has proposed nine amendments to nine existing management plans of nine state parks in Florida. This is coming from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). 

The argument for this is economic growth, expanding public access, increasing outdoor activity, and to improve Floridian quality of life, but does it? Is it a great argument? Is this based upon what is best for the location, or what goes in the state, federal, or local coffers? What about the ecosystem and the biological participants existing in mostly untouched areas? When you are looking for the devil, it is usually county, state then federal. Everything follows suit. The county is all about progression and how it can expand town out into the country. The first sign is the infiltration of energy, cell service, and water companies into areas that are not on a grid. Once you are on a grid, then you become an unwitting hostage to its dictates. Not that those systems are directly bad, but it brings housing and structure that eats away at land and Nature like the Nothing. This is when you have human population growth because people need place to go. This needing a place to go out competes wildlife and Nature. The only predator(s) we seem to have is bad food choices, disease, virus, bacteria and human incompetence among other things. 

These are the state parks that are listed as targets for outdoor recreation economy. 

• Honeymoon Island State Park in Pinellas County (lodging, pickleball, and disc golf)
• Hillsborough River State Park (lodging, pickleball, and disc golf)
• Oleta River State Park
• Jonathan Dickinson State Park
• Doctor Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park
• Anastasia State Park
• Camp Helen State Park
• Topsail Hill Preserve
• Grayton Beach State Park 

There is a proposal for putting a golf course on the state parks. Why? Are there not plenty of those everywhere else?  Don't build another one because you are bored and unchallenged.

Let's look at a real-life golf course that is in the lowlands of South Carolina: The Witch Golf Links. The Witch Golf links was closed (2021-2022) due to excessive flooding that cause the course to be under-utilized or not utilized at all during its golfing seasons. One of the co-partners stated flooding would be a regular thing. This course has 38 acres of wetland and floodplain within its boundaries. Initially, the plan was to build 326-home residential development consisting of 115 townhomes, 211 single family dwellings, and six acres of commercial development. The county had plans to develop this property flood or no flood. At some point, someone made the good decision to not put structures over the wetlands. 

This makes you wonder. How can you look at a property and think this is a bad idea and do it anyway? This is the resonating thought in the Floridian brain pan when this was put on the table for them to eat and it was a definite no go meal. 

The golf course was sold to which the Horry County Council decided it would be developed into a multi-family housing to give a wider birth to the wetlands and swamps where the front nine ran through it. Here you have a property that went from golf course to housing development. 

Who did Horry County decide would be desperate enough to market to and those people would buy an expensive house on a flooded area? Then live with taxes, debt and consequences.

The lesson/idea here for Florida is once DeSantis plunders the state parks with the upgrades and it fails then will it be turned into a housing development? Is it really just a prep for this sort of thing. Gives new meaning to buying Swampland in Florida. 

Not to be a bad cookie, sometimes you can mesh lodgings with state parks. Santee state park has yurts that you can stay in, but they are on the bank of the lake with a pier. People stay there because its down in the woods and they don't want to stay in a hotel. You do have to come to God on the fact you will be visited by insects and snakes. There can be a good balance to the situation where the money goes back to the park. This park has a sink hole problem so that would go to repairing the road system inside the park. When you think of lodging you get into the realm of the wastewater management that comes with people. When you have natural disasters and rising water tables the issues are real.

The pickle ball activity should be left to the towners because you would have to build a court and that takes up surface area and needs to be built to withstand increment weather, as does disc golf. Is anyone going to use it regularly? Upgrades to parks tend to not be used as often and fall into disrepair. Now it is money in and lost. 

Of course, there is always gateway development. What is that? When the local governance decides they want to ease development on constituents and do a little then when that fails go all in and put a bigger spread down because you have now accepted the buildings, gardens, and structures that are there. What you see every day becomes unseen in the long run. You get desensitized to the reality of it because you don't see the minuscule damage going on under the surface.  

The most pressing issue with having our state parks developed is that it falls into the hands of corporations that will see the area as a cash cow or moneymaker on its way to being privatized.  

If you are going to develop over an area, get creative and build things that are engineering feats, work with the nature ecosystem and can withstand a Category 5 hurricane. When you think of life over dollar, dollar is going to win depending on who wants it in their pocket.  

Ultimately, the concern of Floridians on their state parks is the gentrification towards a house development through cherry picked alterations onto the landscape of the park. It is the impact these alterations have on the now existing residents, wildlife and surrounding ecosystems. 

We know our state parks as a place that we can go to get away from the ever-increasing dystopian quality of human life. We resound with Nature by unplugging from it all. Now, someone wants to push an aspect we do not want in that landscape for availability's sake. That is something we already have at home, work, or our daily lives. When you look at human population growth or even migration from other countries, I am surprised that there are not tent camps up everywhere.  Why does everything have to have the life squeezed out of it till all that is left is empty casings with nothing left to give? 

If you would like to learn more, click the link and head over to the Florida DEP page to keep current on breaking news for this situation. 

https://floridadep.gov/about-dep

Just remember, if it is worth it, it is worth fighting for. Once it is ruined, that is a struggle to get it back to a semblance of what it once was. 

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

  

The Viable Connection

Remember this: It takes more than a plane ticket and two weeks in the bush to form a connection to an animal, unless it is all in your head.

Two days ago, I attended a one-on-one workshop. The facilitator gave me some worksheets with questions to answer. As I sat reading over the questions, I was trying to determine a short answer for them. My mind drew a blank. It was things I knew. Over the course of the workshop, I finally just looked at the facilitator and say, “I am going to be honest with you. I should know the answers to these questions, but I am having a problem articulating how I should reply.”

Here it is: When replying to debate and reactionary commentary, the person making the statement really needs to stop, drop, and roll before answering to avoid the back and forth of confused rebuttals and remarks.

I reread my pieces to make sure I might not make sense. Rethinking your position will not hurt you, especially when you have several sources of influence bearing down on you. Lead yourself.

In the commentaries of Big Game hunters defending their stance on hunting exotic animals, you will hear the hunter make a reply about the true connection or intimacy they have with the downed beast. This is from that particular hunter’s mentality.

Is this a true connection (mutual sharing of self through intimacy), a rapport (trust and respect), or is it propaganda hogwash to excuse their behavior and endeavors as relevant? Is the hunter convincing self, what they are doing is okay, in such a short time frame?

I zoomed in. This might be the possible reason this doesn’t fly when trying to explain hunter-hunted mentality. If you received funny looks and rude comments, this might be why.

If you live in America, get on a plan to Africa, then spend two weeks in the bush, and finally shoot an animal, does this constitute a long enough period to form a true connection?

I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. You are more likely to build a connection with the people you are being guided by or hunting with. When it comes to the animal, it is not aware of you. This causes a one-sided event on the part of the hunter’s perspective. The hunter believes there is a concrete connection between hunter-hunted. This is not real.

Consider the short period of time and zero interaction between hunter-hunted. One can consider this a delusion on the part of the hunter. The only time you will get intimate with the hunted animal is after it is dead, and you are field dressing it.

Pseudo-rivalry that exists in the mind of the hunter could fuel this erroneous belief there is a connection, but there is not. This pseudo-rivalry is not known to the beast. The animal may instinctual realize something is stalking it. Evolution has hardwired this instinct.

Where intimacy is concerned, when you are yards away from the hunted, there can be no sense of it. That is what people tell themselves to make it alright. The hunter is not forming a friendship with the hunted. As far as a close familiarity, that is weak tea compared to a hunter that has been studying and questing after an animal for ten years, to the point the hunter decides chasing the animal is enough, then lets it go. That is forming mutual respect for your quarry. If the quarry is crafty enough to out maneuver you, you let it go. Someone else might take the animal down, but not at the expense of your ethics and mores.

There is some romanticizing of the idea of big game hunting on the African continent. There are people who will sale this idea to those willing to buy into a dream. It is pretentious.

A long term, true connection would exist where a human cares for an animal in such a way, that trust is built between the behavior of animal and human. You will find such a thing with abused or untrained animals undergoing long or short-term interaction with their human. These connections evolve into human-animal relationships and bonds. The animal possibly could have a prolonged life under the care of the human. The animal will even come to accept the human into the pack or group, and protect or defend the human. There will be attempts at communication or the human will just know what is going on based on the animal’s behavior.

You will not find this in the hunting experience. There is no relationship, no trust; no connection because the animal is short lived due to its eventual death at the hands of the hunter.

Sometimes you will hear a hunter say, “I love that animal more than you will ever know.” It is not the individual animal but the concept of the breed in particular. The concept of the deer represents food, sustenance, primal desire to stalk and hunt to be as a participating member of an ecosystem. You are already a part of the cycle but the animal draws you further in.

This might be the intimacy spoken of; being more in the life cycle and a part of it, but not to a destructive degree to the overall system or the creatures that share space with you.

Humans are viewed as separate, like an interloping deity; are outside the system, disconnected to its parts.

We form true connections with people because we share camaraderie in the hunt, learn about their way of life and form long-term relationships with those we come to know. 

True connections are formed with immediate pets and animals we come to know over a period of time, where our emotional attachment takes precedence.  

It is hard to believe that a person can form a true connection or intimacy with an animal as an individual, in less than two weeks without learning any of the long term nuances of the hunted.

It is the equivalent of hunting and terminating a stranger. The animal does not know you, and you really knew nothing about it.

Be honest. Honesty does work.

Written by: W Harley Bloodworth