Rewarding Private Land Stewardship by Clay Henderson — Holland & Knight Consulting
July 19, 2001
The 2001 Florida Legislature took innovative steps to reward private land
stewardship with the passage of the Rural and Family Lands Protection Act. The
Act authorizes the creation of several new tools to compensate land owners for
restricting the use of their property. In addition, the Act creates a new
transfer of development rights program to promote protection of rural areas.
The Rural and Family Lands Protection Act is found at Section 61-64 or SB
1922, which authorized several new programs in the Department of Agriculture and
Consumer Services. The Act represented a rare alignment of agricultural and
environmental interests that jointly supported the bill. The premise behind the
new program is that good stewardship of forest lands promotes protection of
wildlife habitat and watersheds. In addition, there is broad recognition that
rural forestry lands are being converted to urban development at a pace of over
200,000 acres per year. The new program is designed to reward good stewards of
the land by compensating them for various new types of conservation agreements.
The Act authorizes the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to
make payments for four types of conservation agreements:
Conservation easements are perpetual restrictions on the use of land in order
to promote protection of open space, watersheds, or wildlife habitat. They are
currently authorized by statute and widely used as a tool in estate planning.
Rural lands protection easements are perpetual easements to retain the
current agricultural or forestry use of land and prevent its subdivision or
conversion to other uses. This agreement is designed to specifically protect
agricultural lands.
Resource conservation easements are contracts for services to provide annual
payments to landowners who actively improve habitat and water restoration on
their lands. This program will reward property owners who go above and beyond
legal requirements and who actively manage land for habitat enhancement.
Agriculture Protection Agreements are similar to conservation easements but
are limited to a term of 30 years.
The Act was not funded by the legislature because they were caught up in
publicly controversial issues relating to the desire to fund Preservation 2000,
Everglades Restoration, and Florida Forever. Each of these programs, including
the Rural and Family Lands Protection Act can be funding out of bonds approved
by the voters as part of the Conservation Amendment in 1998. But the Act does
authorize the Department to develop implementing regulations in anticipation of
funding availability beginning July 1, 2002.
The second part of the act creates a transfer of development rights program
for rural areas. The bill authorizes the Department of Community Affairs to
designate five rural areas as pilot project. Each are must be between 50,000 to
250,000 acres in size. Amendments to the local government comprehensive plans
would identify development zones and receiving zones. The object of the bill is
to designate rural areas for development by utilizing credits from areas
designated to remain rural.
Both aspects of the Rural and Family Lands Protection Act are designed to
blunt criticism of growth management by rural interests. Many private landowners
have long argued that they should be rewarded for good stewardship rather than
lingering a concern that they will be adversely affected by regulation. In
addition, many rural local governments have argued that they were being punished
by the Growth Management Act. The new bill strives to give rural interests new
tools to protect agriculture and open space plus direct development in suitable
areas.
Related Practices