In an effort to preserve more natural land in the fast-growing Nassau County, officials with the Nassau County Planning Department are hoping to launch a Conservation Land Acquisition and Management Program — called CLAM — along with the nonprofit North Florida Land Trust.
The Nassau County Board of Commissioners is set to vote on the proposed program in late October.
“[Nassau County] is probably going to be one of the top 10 growing counties in the state in the future,” said Marc Hudson, the North Florida Land Trust’s director of strategic conservation. “We’re looking at the other hand, that only 7% of the county is preserved, which is far below the average for most counties in the state of Florida.”
An economic study by the county shows that between 1990 and 2000, the county population grew by more than 31%, and between 2000 and 2010, the population again grew by 27%. Projections from the study show the county ballooning from 73,100 people in 2010, to 104,000 people by 2030.
With plans for communities and subdivisions to sprout up across the county, the Land Trust and the county planning department created an online tool people can use to see which areas have been highlighted as key lands to preserve for their natural resources.
Those resources include water, forestry, wildlife and recreational potential. Overall, 18 different elements are factored into the online interface.
“Really, the best properties are going to be those that have elements of all of them,” Hudson said. “And those are the ones on that map that are going to show up.”
The CLAM Program would focus on acquiring and managing those lands. A five-person CLAM committee would debate the merits of lands that are proposed by the public for preservation, and then oversee the process of acquiring and managing them.
But even if the CLAM Program is approved in October, there isn’t a set funding source. Nassau County voters were supposed to vote on a referendum in November to decide whether to fund the program with $30 million, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed those plans back.
Now, the vote for county funding can come in 2022 at the earliest.
Hudson said a number of areas have precious resources that make them prime candidates to preserve.
“The St. Marys River, the Nassau River Basin that’s got great coastal resources, you know? Rare habitats, everything from coastal dunes to longleaf pine habitats for gopher tortoises,” Hudson said.
A large factor into the creation of the CLAM Program was the Western Nassau Heritage Preservation Committee, which was formed in 2017 and published a vision book that highlights the western part of the county’s desire to preserve its land.
While Nassau County has an extremely low percentage of conservation lands - 7% of the county as opposed to the state average of 29% - Hudson said county officials have done a great job of identifying the issue and working toward fixing it.
“Nassau County is lucky enough that most of the county is still rural. Most of the natural resources are still in shape, and the St. Marys River is probably one of the cleanest running rivers we have in North Florida,” he said. “If action can't be taken the next few years, those resources are going to start disappearing, so I do commend them for getting on it right now,” he said.
Nassau County Planner Sue Ann Alleger said even without the CLAM Program, a county recreation and open space plan are helping with conservation.
She said, “What you can do with recreation lands is use them as conservation land, and conservation lands would have a lot of roles” — like flood management.
Thad Crowe, Nassau County’s newly installed planning director, said some conservation is also happening on 24,000 acres of land owned by Rayonier Land Management Services, part of timber company Rayonier.
Apart from plans for communities and commercial properties, Crow said the company is planning for an interconnected “habitat conservation network” that will provide open, green space.
“We're looking [for conservation] with the larger developments like this,” Crowe said. “We're aggressively trying to commit to conserving not just wetlands, but adjacent uplands and areas that have high natural [resource] values.”
Sky Lebron can be reached at slebron@wjct.org, 904-358-6319 or on Twitter at @SkylerLebron.
