On Friday, August 12, 2005 at the Cypress Gardens Best Western Admiral's Inn, myregion.org unveiled to its board members, distinguished guests, community leaders and members of the media a visionary and bold initiative to protect the critical natural areas that are left in Central Florida!
Clay Henderson, Duane DeFreese and Linda Chapin explain the environmental and economic impact of Naturally Central Florida.
Naturally Central Florida: Fitting the Pieces Together is the first document in a community process to protect and sustain the exceptional ecosystems of Central Florida. Seven “jewels of our natural world” in Central Florida are identified and showcased. These are “must save” places with regional, national, (and in some cases) global ecological and economic value that benefit Florida and the Nation.
myregion Board members, distinguished guests and members of the media learn of NCF at the Best Western Admiral's Inn at Cypress Gardens.
Our region's leaders agreed, time is of the essence! Central Florida, for the first time ever, has a unified community vision and a bold plan to protect our last great natural areas and historic places for future generations of Florida residents and visitors. These seven must save places include:
St. Johns Mosaic / Econlockhatchee River
The Indian River Lagoon
The Greater Kissimmee Prairie
The Volusia Conservation Corridor
The Green Swamp
The Wekiva-Ocala Greenway
The Lake Wales Ridge
Naturally Central Florida (NCF) – a partnership between seven Central Florida counties, myregion.org, and the University of Central Florida Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies was created to respond wisely and responsibly to the unprecedented growth we are and will continue to experience through the decades ahead.
According to a recent Lakeland Ledger article by Tom Palmer, "The most effective strategy is to think big and long-term and to open a community conversation about how to achieve the goals, said John Howell, chairman of the Cascade Land Conservancy in Washington state.
John Howell, Cascade Land Conservancy Chairman
He described how his group has been effectively working since 1989 on a 100-year land preservation plan in an 8,200 square-mile, four-county region in the Seattle area by working with landowners, developers, environmental and business leaders and local and state officials.
Howell said their approach is to look at where future residents will live and where preservation should occur and to try to produce a vision that will accommodate both." Howell was also greatly impressed with the efforts of myregion.org and Naturally Central Florida and said he would use our region's work as a best practice example at home.
"We see this effort in central Florida as the most important work being done in Florida," said Charles Lee of the Florida Audubon Society, "the necessary implementation system of this plan is going to be the kind of regionwide, statewide and ultimately national consensus that was necessary to support the Everglades restoration."
A Florida Today Editorial summed it up best, "the bottom line is preserving our quality of life, and making smart choices now for the future. We believe a stronger approach is needed to safeguard these areas not just as individual stretches of land and water, but as a tightly knit mosaic whose preservation is critical to the entire region's well being.
To accomplish that, Central Florida lawmakers should form a coalition to treat the areas as an environmental whole and work more closely together to save them.
No more time can be wasted. These gems have to be protected -- for the good of us all."
To dowload the full report, go to www.myregion.org .
The primary mission of the myregion.org Board of Directors is for Central Florida to be globally competitive in the 21st Century while maintaining a high standard quality of life. To help achieve this goal we must recognize that the quality of life of our citizens and tourists is dependent on the beauty and health of the environment in which we live, work and play.
