If you want to spend a great day outdoors, visit a state park on Memorial Day. It’s free.
There are several state parks in our area.
The oldest is Highlands Hammock State Park west of U.S. 27 in Sebring in Highlands County. It contains a boardwalk, trails and other recreational amenities.
It was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The first state park in Polk County was Lake Kissimmee State Park on Camp Mack Road east of Lake Wales. It contains a network of trails, access to Lake Kissimmee, a boat ramp and a replica of a 19th century cow camp.
Nearby is Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek State Park, which is located east of Haines City on Firetower Road off Hatchineha Road.
Colt Creek State Park is located on State Road 471 in the Green Swamp north of Lakeland.
Other state parks in the area are Paynes Creek State Park near Bowling Green, Lake June-in-Winter Scrub State Park near Lake Placid and Lake Louisa State Park near Clermont.
To find out more about state parks and to plan your visit at FloridaStateParks.org.

The news that emerged earlier this month that a Jacksonville corporation had proposed slicing off a 600-acre prime piece of real estate in Guana River Wildlife Management Area for some kind of development scheme probably left a lot of us in the conservation community scratching our heads.,
That is, what part of no don’t our so-called environmental officials in Tallahassee and Gov. Ron DeSantis who appointed them understand?
First we saw the proposal to turn some state parks into resorts with golf courses and hotels.
Then, there was the proposal to give some prime conservation lands in Withlacoochee State Forest to a neighboring golf course developer in exchange for a beat-up pine plantation that was isolated from any conservation lands.
The latest proposal involved trading 600 acres of state conservation land for 3,065 acres spread across four counties that had some vague connections to existing conservation lands.
In all three cases the official position of the state agencies overseeing these properties was to support the idea to avoid the fate of the state employee who blew the whistle on the state park scheme.
He was fired.
Add to that the staggering dishonesty of DeSantis and his subordinates on the park scheme until political reality finally smacked the governor in the face, That was when the Florida Legislature unanimously passed a bill to protect state parks from overdevelopment.
He signed it.
The other two proposals went away a little more quietly, but not until after the state’s conservation community, including Sierra Club. organized public opposition against them.
Was this be the end of these schemes?
We hope so, but experience shows us we have to watch state officials in this administration closely.

Just as we heard the news that a controversial proposal to swap prime conservation land in the Withlacoochee State Forest in Hernando County for a beat-up pine plantation in Levy County was dead and that Gov Ron DeSantis had signed a bill to stop plans to develop hotels and other intense projects with Florida’s state parks, we have learned the mischief regarding state conservation lands is not over.
On Wednesday the state’s Acquisition and Restoration Council will consider proposal to swap 600 acres at Guana River Wildlife Management Area for a mishmash of private lands in Lafayette, Osceola, St. Johns and Volusia counties totaling 3.065 acres.
People who use Guana River oppose the swap because it would remove a popular section of trails within the 9.815-acre site.
But there is a much larger issue involving the permanence of public conservation lands and what kind of precedence this sets.
Another issue is transparency.
Surely someone in state government knows who requested the swap, which has the odor of a surplus without calling it that, and who put together the package of lands involved in the proposal, but that information is not being shared in the agenda packet.
On the surface this might look like a good deal if viewed only from the perspective of acreage given up and acreage gained.
However a closer look at the maps shows land that at best can be described as sorta kinda near other conservation lands with no clear access in some cases and no listing of current ownerships to give the public an idea of whether this is an arm’s length transaction of something else.
Sierra Club’s position is to deny the request.
It is also in stark contrast with three more straightforward requests for less-than-fee acquisitions in our area that are also on Wednesday’s agenda.
They involve the 347-acre Joshua Land Ranch northeast of Polk City, the 2,470-acre Rogers Ranch northwest of Groveland and the 660-acre Ludwig Ranch in southern Hardee County.
The first two are in the Green Swamp and the third is in the Horse Creek Basin. Horse Creek is a major tributary to the Peace River.
We are supporting those requests.
If you would like to add your voice to the items on the ARC agenda–especially the bad one–it would be welcome.

The best that can be said about the updated preferred route for the Central Polk Parkway East is that it could have been worse.
Thanks to heavy lobbying by Bok Tower advocates the turnpike folks are now proposing a route that is probably no more threatening to the preserve’s serenity than State Road 60 or U.S. 27.
That route still takes it through a rural homestead behind Eagle Ridge Mall though.
A proposed route across U.S. 27 farther north takes it across the Buck Mann Ranch and some other wetlands near Lake Annie that Polk County is working on restoring as part of a regional water-quality improvement project, so it could be a good partnership.
The real problems begin farther north on the outskirts of Davenport.
The planned corridor runs through some private property near public conservation land in the Marion Creek Basin.
For the private property owners, the intrusion is unwelcome, according to public statements some of them have made.
For people visiting some of the conservation lands the intrusion is more of a quality of experience erosion as much as anything.
Here’s why.
They are not talking about building a country lane here.
The planned toll road corridor has a tentative 500-foot–wide diameter, which will eventually be reduced to 310 feet if the project ever reaches the design and right-of-way acquisition phases.
That width is nearly the length of a football field.
For rural property owners, that’s a big chunk of land to lose to an intense infrastructure project because whatever peace and quiet they enjoyed will be replaced by the thrum of traffic and the erosion of any dark sky conditions they might have enjoyed.
For recreational users of the public conservation land this project–if it is ever built–will, coupled with the planned widening of Cypress Parkway, provide noise pollution in stereo.
That is in addition to the compounding of smoke-management issues for conservation land managers.
In addition, it is still an open question whether this project will in the end be considered financially feasible and whether it will really do anything useful to alleviate future projected traffic congestion on U.S, 27.
A project consultant I spoke to at the meeting said they had done some modeling based on cellphone GPS data and other digital information and thought the road would attract enough motorists to make it work even if U.S. 27 continues to clog with local traffic.
Maybe so, but the conservation downsides just seem so compelling that it seems the money could be spent more responsibly elsewhere.

The long-discussed idea of building a toll road through northeastern Polk County to allegedly relieve traffic congestion on U.S. 27 will return for more public comment Wednesday night.
The open house will occur from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm at the Tom Fellows Community Center, 207 North Blvd West in Davenport.
The meeting is expected to reveal the location of the “preferred ” route for the proposed highway. Sierra and others’ preference is for no route at all.
Our position is that the road is unnecessary, It is also worth pointing out that so much has changed in that part of Polk County since the road was proposed, tabled and then brought back to life.
One of the arguments backers made initially is that it would encourage access to the industrial park land on Haines City’s south side. However, it seems obvious that there has been quite a bit of industrial development in the meantime without the road.
Another change is that in the beginning there was a lot of undeveloped land along the proposed corridor. Many subdivisions had been platted, but remained undeveloped.
Today most of the corridor is a sea of rooftops, which could push any alignment farther east toward the edge of conservation lands and remaining rural homesteads in the Marion Creek Basin.
This potentially will cause all kinds of problems ranging from the essential destruction of viable agricultural and horticultural operations to creating barriers for prescribed fire management.
It is worth noting that one of the people responsible for conserving land around Marion Creek was the late County Commissioner Ernie Caldwell. His vision is worth honoring.
Additionally, one of the first parcels purchased under the Polk County Environmental Lands program to save a population of a previously unknown species of scrub mint. is located here.
Finally, the premise that this road will do much to alleviate congestion on U.S, 27 becomes more questionable the farther from U.S. 27 it is located.
That is, how many people would be actually be willing to pay a toll to leave US 27 and drive miles into the countryside only to end up on another congested local road?
What kind of origin-destination studies have been conducted to analyze how much of that traffic on US 27 is local traffic and how much is through traffic?
Or is this not a US 27 reliever at all and is instead a new freight route to connect State Road 60 to Interstate 4 someday when additional missing links in the proposed network are funded and built, which could be decades in the future?
Those are some of the questions people should be asking the consultants who will be staffing the exhibits.
This is really important because without a lot public pushback, this sprawlway could happen.

If you want to contribute to our understanding of the diversity of wild plants and animals in Polk County, the City Nature Challenge is the place to be this weekend.
The effort involves taking photos of flora and fauna in the Polk landscape and posting them on iNaturalist.
If you are new to this iNaturalist is a phone app as well as a website where people can post their photos.
The data-gathering part of the City Nature Challenge runs from Friday through Monday. Participants have until May 4 to post their photos.
Results will be announced May 5
Polk County’s City Nature Challenge is one of only a handful around the state. There are a couple in south Florida, one in Orange County, one in Alachua County, another in northeast Florida and a Florida-Georgia effort that covers a good portion of the Florida Panhandle.

Here are some tips.
The goal is to map biodiversity of wild plants and animals. That means avoiding photos of domestic pets, farm animals, and plants in, your yard unless they are native.
Try to take clear photos and try to crop the photos enough so that the image is identifiable.
If you are not sure what kind of plant or animal you are photographing that’s okay. Make your best guess and post it. There are many helpful people out there who will suggest more accurate IDs, so it is a great chance to learn.
Finally, just get outdoors and have fun.

Tuesday the County Commission approved a contract to build a facility at the North Central Landfill to properly take care of the waste generated by septic tanks.
The $21.4 million contract with C & T Contracting Services is expected to provide a long sought after solution to the disposal problem for Polk’s septic tank businesses.
Traditionally the waste has been dumped in pastures in rural areas of the county, but it had become harder to find locations that did not generate odor and pollution complaints from adjacent landowners as Polk County allowed more development in formerly rural agricultural areas. Polk County officials had been discussing the construction of one or more treatment facilities since at least 2020.
According to the contract approved Tuesday, the new plant should be completed by sometime late in 2026.
Funds from the Polk County Utilities capital fund and President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan will be used to pay for the project.
The lack of a local disposal area has forced haulers to use a plant in Hillsborough County, which has increased the amount they have to charge customers. The opening of a plant in Polk County should make the service more affordable.
The disposal of septic tank waste and sewer plant sludge, which the industry has tried to use the more harmless-sounding term biosolids to describe, has been an environmental issue for decades.
That’s because the waste contains nutrients and traces of other chemicals including toxic metals and medical waste that. affect water quality and human health.
The opening of the BS Ranch & Farm facility on the outskirts of Lakeland in 2016 was initially thought to be a solution to the disposal problem, but the facility’s operation never lived up to its billing and has since been shut down after years of controversy regarding odor complaints and other problems.
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