Lawmakers are giving no new money this year to the state's main land conservation program.
Earlier this year, the state Senate allocated $35 million to Florida Forever. And Gov. Ron DeSantis had proposed spending $115 million. But the budget proposed this week by state lawmakers zeroes out any funding.
Gil Smart is policy director with the environmental group Friends of the Everglades. He's not happy about this week's development.
"There seems to be this idea that it's a burden to the taxpayers, that acquiring land requires the actual purchase price and requires the upkeep of it," he said. "The appetite for actually acquiring these environmentally sensitive lands seems to be diminishing, because there's a fiscal rationale behind it."
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Instead, they are sweeping existing funds into the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, which pays farmers and ranchers NOT to develop their land.
Smart said he supports the Rural and Family Lands Program, but those conservation easements are not enough.
"Easements have a place, if you're talking solely in terms of trying to prevent some lands from being developed," he said. "But the problem with easements is they don't offer the same sort of public benefits that outright acquiring the land does."
"Florida continues to grow population-wise, but we're going to need new parks. We're going to need new public spaces. We're going to need new places where people can fish and bike and hike and kayak," Smart said. "How are we going to acquire them if we're not going to acquire some of these Florida Forever lands?"
This comes just three years after lawmakers committed to spending at least $100 million a year on Florida Forever.
Since the program was begun in 2000, the state has purchased more than 1 million acres of land. The program and its predecessor, Preservation 2000, have preserved more than 2.6 million acres in the state.
ALSO READ: Funding is slashed for the Florida Forever land preservation program
Voters in 2014 approved a constitutional amendment directing that at least one-third of taxes on the sale of land go to land and water conservation. But state lawmakers have consistently ignored that directive.
Smart said public pressure is needed to show Tallahassee how many people feel about protecting natural lands from development.
"The public has to know what's at stake here. They want to preserve these environmentally sensitive lands. I don't think what's going on in Tallahassee represents the will of the people," he said. "So the first part is letting the people know, hey, this is going on - you guys better pay attention to it."
He said that worked last year, when public outcry forced lawmakers to cancel plans to develop several state parks.
