We’ll keep fighting, forest advocates vow
A state wildlife panel on Tuesday faced newly emboldened opponents of a planned toll road through Split Oak Forest, and opted to postpone a vote that just weeks ago seemed likely to endorse the forest route.
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission decided instead to let its executive director continue to negotiate with Osceola and Orange counties, who share ownership of the 1,700-acre preserve but have differing opinions on the best path for the Osceola County Parkway extension.
Osceola wants it to go through the forest. Orange, after a recent change of heart, doesn’t.
Neither do most of the 75 people who addressed the commission’s governing board meeting at the Hyatt Regency on International Drive in Orlando, pleading for the panel to block the Central Florida Expressway Authority’s preferred plan for the $1 billion project by refusing to lift protective restrictions on the forest acres.
Those restrictions, known as conservation easements, were intended to protect the land in perpetuity.
Many forest advocates groaned and grumbled when the board agreed to let agency executive director Roger Young keep negotiating a deal while commission staff takes a closer look at 1,550 acres developers have offered to swap if the expressway authority, known as CFX, can build a 1.3-mile segment of the highway that cleaves 160 acres of Split Oak Forest from the rest of the preserve.
“This is bad,” said Valerie Anderson, president of the Friends Of Split Oak, an advocacy group. “They should not be negotiating with CFX, Orange County and Osceola County to allow a toll road through Split Oak. They should be protecting Split Oak.”
She said she’s not optimistic of the outcome. “But we’ll keep on fighting,” she said.
For 90 minutes, the seven-member wildlife commission, all appointees of the governor, were peppered with pleas from environmentalists, hikers and nature lovers who implored them to say no to taking any portion of Split Oak. The opponents have been invigorated by the Orange County Commission’s surprise Nov. 28 vote to reverse its historic position and oppose the road through the preserve.
“Building a highway through 1,689 acres of legally designated mitigation park is not only infuriating, it’s environmentally insane,” said Steven M. Myers, a Maitland attorney specializing in environmental and land use law.
Many forest defenders described Split Oak as an oasis.
“A place where our souls can find peace and wonder,” one said.
Alternate routes have been proposed for the toll road, said Melissa Tucker, director of the fish and wildlife commission’s division of habitat and species conservation, who provided the board with an overview of the project and controversy.
“We recognize the road choice that would go south of the forest area is best for conservation,” she said, referring to the alternative dubbed the “Split Oak Avoidance Route.” “But we also recognize that route would be the one with the greatest impact on the local communities and private homeowners.”
Though outnumbered, a couple members of the Lake Mary Jane Alliance, residents of neighborhoods near the preserve, spoke in favor of the preserve-crossing path CFX calls the “Split Oak Minimization Route,” citing the proposed land donation.
Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson, elected three years ago partly because of her pledge to defend Split Oak, thanked the commission for its decades of restoration work managing the forest and urged the panel to “stay the course on your commitment to protecting these public lands and the imperiled species that have found refuge there.”
She pointed out the Expressway Authority has no ownership or investment in the forest.
“Yet somehow we find ourselves beholden to their preferred alignment, which was chosen for financial feasibility, not its conservation value or public benefit,” Wilson said. “The mitigation alternatives that are being presented to you today are nothing more than a shell game…The shell game is that you’d let them take this valuable land that you’ve worked hard to restore and they will give you some other land that you can then start to try to resuscitate.”
Forest defenders ramped up the pressure on the commission in the hours before Tuesday’s meeting, rallying just after dark Monday near the Shingle Creek Trail in Orlando.Protestors stood together and holding tall battery-powered, illuminated letters on an overpass above Florida’s Turnpike that spelled out “SAVE SPLIT OAK.”
“We combined art with renewable energy to raise awareness about protecting the forest,” said Frank OSCAR Weaver, climate and clean energy manager for the Alianza Center, which organized the rally with the friends of Split Oak Forest.
The extension is favored by the Lake Nona-based Tavistock Development Co. and Suburban Land Reserve, part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ corporate family. Both entities have proposed large developments on holdings near the forest.
Osceola County Commission Chairman Brandon Arrington, speaking for his board, said the road would not cross any part of the forest in Orange County. Also vice chair of CFX’s governing board, he praised the land swap, predicting it will someday be held up as the gold standard for other regional transportation projects.
FWC commissioner Albert Maury explained his decision to keep negotiating.
“The devil’s in the details and we don’t have enough of the details here,” he said.
Maury said any deal negotiated by Young, FWC’s executive director, would need board approval.
Source: Orlando Sentinel
