Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet quickly voted Tuesday to proceed with the purchase of 1,342-acre Creek Ranch near Lake Hatchineha in eastern Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The purchase price is $36.1 million. There was no word on when closing will occur to finalize the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ranch was the focus of a fight involving Sierra Club and others last year over a plan to develop the property into a residential-commercial project that would put urban growth deeper into what has traditionally been a rural area of Polk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The property\u2019s development would have interrupted a lengthy wildlife corridor stretching from the Everglades to near the Green Swamp where Florida panther and Florida black bear have been documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lack of intense development there will also aid in maintaining some of the dark sky aspect of that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once the state acquires the property, it will be managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as a wildlife management area. Agency officials say the plan to use the buildings on the grounds for staff housing and equipment storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are also plans to organize youth conservation camp activities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet quickly voted Tuesday to proceed with the purchase of 1,342-acre Creek Ranch near Lake Hatchineha in eastern Polk County. The purchase price is $36.1 million. There was no word on when closing will occur to finalize the deal. The ranch was the focus of a fight involving Sierra […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2549,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2548\/revisions\/2549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}