Struggling state parks may sell eggs, seeds and berries
Florida’s park service has drawn controversy for looking at logging and grazing to bolster its strapped budget, but the agency also may consider an ongoing garage sale of sorts stocked with stuff from the state’s most protected landscapes.
Some of what parklands may have to offer include seed from native grasses, berries, eggs and decorative tree parts.
“We will manage what we can with what we have,” said Donald Forgione, director of Florida parks, speaking recently in Orlando during a rare calling together of the 89 managers who run 171 state parks.
Forgione solicited ideas for raising money to buy equipment or trade goods for contractor work, such as forest restoration. He noted his agency regularly falls short in goals for preserving parkland health but he counts on no extra help from lawmakers.
“We are trying to selffund resource management projects because we just don’t have the money to do it,” Forgione said.
Forgione said revenue from 24 million visitors is on track this year to bring in $62 million. That’s well under the nearly $80 million it costs to run the 800,000-acre park system, which has been awarded as the nation’s best three times.
The state’s environmental chief, Jon Steverson, has triggered a furor by calling for parks to wean themselves from state subsidies, an all but unheard of financial model for parklands in the nation.
The heavy lifting would be done by opening parks to cattle grazing and cutting timber, proposals criticized by many previous park authorities as wrong for properties that amount to Florida’s versions of treasured national parks.
Steverson was appointed last year as the Department of Environmental Protec-
Albert Gregory, former chief tion secretary by Gov. Rick Scott, who has cut budgets at other environmental agencies.
Steverson oversees the park service, which is staffed overwhelmingly by career biologists, rangers and managers who traditionally attempt to steer clear of state politics.
“They all have an abiding love for the resource, but they are in a new position and that can be tough,” said Albert Gregory, who retired last year as chief planner for state parks. “There is a new mindset and they have been asked to explore new possibilities.”
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The park service’s consideration of logging, grazing and a host of lower-profile measures has emerged without a formal agenda and no organized or comprehensive way to publicly vet the concept.
Any proposal to exploit a resource would be made available for comment on a park-by-park basis, according to DEP and the park service.
Speaking at the managers meeting, the service’s head of natural and cultural resources, Parks Small, said Steverson has personally urged the agency to find strategies to fund itself.
“Real quick show of hands, who is getting all of their land management done?” Small asked, addressing a crowded room. “Who has got all the money they need to get it done, or the staff, or the workforce, the partners or the volunteers?”
Small answered for the silent audience: “None of us.”
What followed was a give and take of ideas that may or may not have any chance of evolving into practice at state parks.
But discussion suggested if something grows on parkland, it may be a candidate for harvest, sale or trade, a concept the service has limited experience or confidence with.
“We aren’t going to launch until we know what we are doing and we don’t know what the heck we are doing,” Forgione said.
The ensuing talk didn’t thresh out details but was meant to encourage a mindset among managers to follow up with creative suggestions for how to do more work with less state support.
The reason for that wasn’t immediately clear.
“With the new ideas, which holds priority ... is it providing outside opportunity or is it generating revenue?” asked one park manager.
Forgione said “it’s not to make money” and “it’s not about the private sector benefiting,” but rather the goal is better management of parks.
Concepts brought up included harvest, sale or bartering of seed from native wiregrass, alligator eggs, palmetto berries, sea oats, tree stumps and tree limbs sought for decorative works.
“This is a way where we can do the work that we need to get done, that may generate a little more gas to put in the gas tank and do additional work,” said Small, who began his career in the early1990s as a volunteer and then biologist at Wekiwa Springs State Park.
“That’s very exciting to me and it’s also very scary to me at the same time. But if we can do it smartly, then at the end of the day, we will get more work done.”
“They all have an abiding love for the resource, but they are in a new position and that can be tough. There is a new mindset and they have been asked to explore new possibilities.”