The Rural Land Stewardship Act: Testing a New Method of Protecting Rural Lands

Is it possible to accommodate all the population growth that is projected for a fast-growing rural area while still maintaining its rural character, property values, and protecting natural resources? A new initiative in the Florida Statutes is aiming to find out.

The Rural Land Stewardship Act (Section 163.3177(11)(d) Florida Statutes) was passed to promote a new method of protecting rural lands with high urban development potential. This will be accomplished through a new system of Transferable Land Use Credits, whereby private landowners are provided equity for their natural resources. Landowners get credits that can be transferred for development in planned locations. At first glance you might think this is just another kind of conservation easement program where development rights are purchased by public dollars, but it is not. Instead of using public dollars to purchase development rights, the Rural Land Stewardship Program (RLSP) uses real market forces to drive conservation and total infrastructure development in tandem.

Transferable Land Use Credits: Market Forces, Natural Resources and the Multiplier Effect

The Rural Land Stewardship Program starts with grouping land uses into multiple layers: residential uses, mineral uses, recreational uses, and agricultural uses. Each land use layer is given a base credit value, which are added together to make a total of 1 full credit. Natural resources are then factored in as a multiplier value. While a conservation easement program gives value for a single layer - the residential land use layer - RLSP provides landowners with values for multiple land uses that increase in value if natural resources are present.

Let’s use an example to illustrate how this part of the program might work: You have 200 acres of forest land in a fast-growing area and a developer has offered you $250,000 for the property, but this land has been in your family for several generations and you would much rather see the land stay intact and productive for timber and wildlife benefits. You have been actively managing your property for timber and wildlife for several years. You have longleaf pine and gopher tortoises on about 70 acres on a sandhill and you have a wetland on the back forty with lots of pitcher plants and other unique plants. Your county, having adopted the Rural Land Stewardship Program, factors in credits for those natural resource values and determines that your total property value is actually 1.5 times that for residential value only. Now you can opt for transferable land use credits, worth $375,000, to retain the full ownership and equity of your land with the opportunity to transfer one or more of your land values for development to another planned location in the county.

The Opposite of Sprawl is Cluster

What sets this program apart from other land conservation programs is its holistic scope - conservation and development are planned together and with the input of private landowners so that small towns, with all necessary infrastructure and services, are developed within the context of a rural landscape of private agricultural and forest lands. This is accomplished by requiring developers to have a minimum number of credits in order to break ground. Since the credits can only be purchased from the surrounding landowners, the landowners automatically become partners in the development process. A developer interested in building houses must have a package of credits before the development is approved - in addition to houses, the development must include all necessary infrastructure and services close by. This is done to create a small town surrounded by private forest and agricultural lands. The aim of this strategy is to prevent the kind of development that is all too common - an uncontrolled, sprawling series of strip malls unconnected to existing infrastructure, raising property taxes and resulting in traffic, congestion, and an overall decreased quality of life for the area.

Rural Land Stewardship Pilot Projects in Collier County

Such a system of credits was established in a 300 square-mile area of Collier County. This area will be developed over the next 25 years with the development footprint covering just 10% of that land base. Villages and towns will be built, surrounded by extensive areas of private open space to maintain rural character. Altogether, 90,000 acres of environmentally sensitive lands will be permanently protected with conservation easements; and residential development rights will be removed from another 85,000 acres of land that will remain in agriculture and open space.

What makes this project attractive is its cost-effectiveness. Under RLSP, all of this is planned to be accomplished for a cost of $800,000; the cost of creating a Geographic Information System (GIS) overlay of the area, ground verification of the overlay, public meetings, stakeholder meetings, an economic analysis, and development of a Comprehensive Plan amendment and the necessary Land Development codes. Not a single public dollar will be used to buy easements or development rights. Development pays for itself by leveraging each public dollar many times over.

For the sake of comparison, under the RLSP, this $800,000 will protect approximately 350 times the area with environmentally sensitive lands, water features, agriculture and open space than would be protected with the same investment using conservation easements. It would require a public investment of $250-300 million to achieve the same result through fee and less-than-fee purchases.

For more information about this project, contact Craig Evans of Stewardship America, Inc., 621 NW 53rd Street, Suite 240, Boca Raton, FL 33487, 561-995-1474, email craig@privatelands.org, on the Web at privatelands.org.

Fall is acorn season, particularly for the sweet white oak species that are consumed by many animals. The nineteen species of oaks native to Florida are a small segment of the beech family (Fagaceae) which includes beeches, chestnuts, chinkapins and oaks. The oaks are economically important trees worldwide and are valuable wildlife food in the form of acorns. There are over 300 species of oaks worldwide and they are divided into two groups: white oaks and red (or sometimes black) oaks.

The White Oak Group

Eight members of the white oak group are native to Florida: bluff oak, Chapman oak, chinkapin oak, live oak, overcup oak, post oak, swamp chestnut oak and white oak. All have alternately arranged leaves, usually with rounded tips and rounded lobes. The inner surface of the acorn shell is smooth and the acorns generally germinate in the fall of the year. Acorns mature in the fall of the year they are formed (annual oaks) and are sweeter than those of the bitter red oak group, making them more palatable to both humans and wildlife. Florida wildlife that heavily use acorns, especially between fall and spring, include deer, turkey, squirrels, wild hogs and black bears.

The Red Oak Group

Eleven members of the red oak group are native to Florida: black oak, blackjack oak, bluejack oak, laurel oak, myrtle oak, Shumard oak, southern red oak, swamp red oak, turkey oak, water oak and willow oak. All exhibit alternate, pointed and/or bristle-tipped leaves. Acorns take two years to mature (biennial oaks) and are generally bitter to the taste, with wooly or silky inner linings in a tough outer shell. These seeds generally germinate (sprout) in the spring.

Reference

Arny, N. 1996. Common oaks of Florida. Fact Sheet FOR 51, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida (online at edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fr004).

This information is useful for observing trends over time, but does not necessarily reflect current conditions at a particular location. Landowners considering a timber sale would be wise to let a consulting forester help them obtain the best current prices. Note that price per ton for each product is now included in parentheses after the price per cord.

Stumpage price ranges reported across Florida in the 3rd quarter 2003 Timber Mart-South (TMS) report were $19-$30/cord ($7-$11/ton) for pine pulpwood, $47-$71/cord ($18-$26/ton) for pine C-N-S, $76-$109/cord ($28-$41/ton) for pine sawtimber, and $102-$120/cord ($38-$45/ton) for pine plylogs. On average, prices were up for all products, except C-N-S, from 2nd quarter 2003 prices. Hardwood pulpwood prices ranged from $17-$27/cord ($6-$9/ton), which was up from those of the previous quarter. A more complete summary of 3rd quarter 2003 stumpage prices is available at your County Extension office. See www.forest2market.com for weekly, South-wide, per-ton price updates for the major pine and hardwood timber products.

Trend Report

The wetter-than-normal weather had some effect on logging in most states during the July-September period. For the first time south-wide hardwood pulpwood prices exceeded those of pine pulpwood. Wet conditions resulted in some concern on the part of pulp mills about winter supplies of hardwood raw material. The big news maker since mid year has been plywood, where price increases were noticed by the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. With production of structural panels down in recent quarters, the increase in price was more likely due to reduced supply than increased demand except after Hurricane Isabel hit the east coast.

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