Florida wildlife commission officials lean toward approving highway in Split Oak Forest

The embittering controversy over Split Oak Forest is whether to allow a major highway to be built across its southern pinelands in exchange for a developer’s donation of hundreds of adjoining wildlands acres and a road builder’s contribution of millions of dollars for caretaking.

This week, the longtime custodian of Split Oak Forest, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, disclosed in a document and public meeting it’s comfortable with the terms of that proposed exchange as likely to improve the cherished preserve in east Orange and Osceola counties.

The trade, said Jason Hight, director of the wildlife commission’s conservation planning, “would hopefully achieve a net positive conservation benefit” for Split Oak Forest.

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While the first public indication of the commission’s preliminary stance, that disclosure is at a staff level and stops cautiously short of a clear recommendation.

A final decision is expected from the wildlife commission’s full board meeting May 1 in Daytona Beach. Governor-appointed members could veto the deal, demand more concessions from the developer and road builder or agree to current terms.

They could also characterize — and bring clarity to a dispute that has roiled elected officials, environmental groups and a remarkably invested public — whether the trade would be damaging, a big win or merely the slightly better of bad choices for Split Oak Forest.

With the controversy, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has been cast with a central role in one of Central Florida’s important growth matters.

Typically engaged in hunting and fishing rules, and protecting wildlife and natural lands, the agency has no precedent for solving the kind of regional tussle engulfing Split Oak Forest, said Melissa Tucker, director of the commission’s habitat and species conservation.

The proposed expressway that would cross Split Oak Forest, the tolled State Road 534, would extend from near Orlando International Airport toward the southeast into a region that Tavistock Development Co., The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Osceola County have designated for the rise of a vast cityscape.

Much of the public animus toward S.R. 534 is colored by popular resentment for the punishing congestion of growth already eroding Osceola County’s quality of life.

The wildlife commission is widely praised for its ecological care of Split Oak Forest during the past 30 years. But the state agency is increasingly absorbing the brunt of anger that once seemingly sacrosanct boundaries of the forest are vulnerable to a highway.

“Why should I believe you?” asked Gerry Frowley, an Osceola resident living south of Kissimmee, who at a public meeting Thursday night criticized the wildlife commission for lacking integrity.

“I hope we can earn your trust,” said Jimmy Conner, who oversees the commission’s 6 million acres of wildlife areas including Split Oak Forest.

The wildlife commission did not volunteer for its unlikely role. It was thrust into it by Tavistock Development Co., which has a powerful Central Florida presence and is the maker of the nearby Lake Nona community.

Tavistock’s partner, the Latter-day Saints church — one of the largest, if not largest private landowners in Florida and parent of the huge Deseret Ranches of Central Florida — is providing vast acreage for development, for S.R. 534 right-of-way and for the Split Oak Forest donation — 1,550 acres spreading east from the forest.

S.R. 534’s builder, the Central Florida Expressway Authority, has pledged an estimated $13 million over 30 years to rehabilitate the 1,550 acres to match the ecological quality of Split Oak Forest.

The toll highway would cross 1.3 miles of Split Oak Forest, pave 60 acres and leave 100 acres separated from the rest of the forest.

Still under negotiation are several key elements of the proposal for Split Oak Forest.

Tucker said the expressway authority’s financial contribution for rehabilitating and caring for the 1,550-acre donation starts at $13 million but is yet to be determined.

Also unresolved is how much of the 1.3 miles of expressway in the forest will be designed with costly overpasses for wildlife, recreation trails and equipment needed for forest maintenance — especially controlled burns.

Those kinds of details must be part of the commission members’ deliberation next month, Tucker said.

When commission members took up Split Oak Forest in December, several were nonplussed by the intensity of controversy surrounding their otherwise low-intensity wildlife conservation holding — where there is no hunting, cycling, camping and visiting after sunset.

They could have punted the matter to the agency’s bureaucracy to resolve. But they agreed to have the final say and face what could be the most vocal of many public showdowns so far.

At least two scenarios are on the table: say no to the expressway and keep the forest at its current 1,689 acres with a busy four-lane road against its south boundary or accept the expressway and expand the forest into 3,179 acres.

It’s a decision one Osceola resident thinks should have been handled long ago under less pressing and costly circumstances.

“It just feels like there has been a lack of foresight and coordination,” Bob Mac Leod said.