Commissioner's Corner: Getting back to nature

This month, I would like to tell you about Orange County’s efforts to protect environmentally sensitive areas while balancing the demands of our ever-increasing population. Orange County is a host to a wide variety of ecosystems and biomes. Many animal species call Orange County home, including bald eagles, Florida black bears, and gopher tortoises. We also have an abundance of plant life that thrives in our unique soil and hydrology. Key to our environmental protection efforts are the conservation of wetlands, areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water and support plants adapted for life in saturated soils.

Orange County has acquired various environmental lands to ensure pristine wetlands are preserved. The Environmental Protection Division has acquired several large tracts of land within District 5, including the Econlockhatchee Sandhills Conservation Area, Ken Bosserman Econlockhatchee River Preserve, Pine Lilly Preserve, Long Branch Preserve and Savage Christmas Creek Preserve. Some of these areas are open to the public and provide opportunities for recreation through hiking and horseback riding. In addition, Orange County, in conjunction with the St. Johns River Water Management District, acquired the massive Hal Scott Regional Preserve and Park with over 9,000 acres of habitats along the Econlockhatchee River, including wetlands, to explore.

Many wetland areas are ecologically and environmentally significant.Wetlands include swamps, marshes, bayheads, bogs, cypress domes and strands, sloughs, wet prairies, riverine swamps and marshes, hydric seepage slopes, tidal marshes, and mangrove swamps. A variety of wildlife use wetlands to live and feed. Birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, shellfish, and insects, just to name a few, thrive in wetlands’ shallow, nutrient rich waters, providing food for larger birds and mammals. Wetland ecology aids in the regulation of global water, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles while also storing atmospheric carbon in plants and the soil. Wetlands have numerous beneficial effects on our water, providing for water storage, preventing erosion and sedimentation between ecosystems, and providing natural filtration to groundwater.

Orange County has taken steps to reduce and mitigate the impacts of development on these environmentally sensitive areas. Any development that proposes to impact a wetland must receive a Conservation Area Impact permit from our Environmental Protection Division. Staff from EPD will conduct a thorough site review and project assessment to ensure all county mitigation requirements are being met. Mitigation is required for very small to very large wetland impacts. Mitigation ensures that the habitat value being lost in the impacted wetland is made up for in another location onsite or nearby through wetland preservation, creation, enhancement, or restoration.

Orange County is committed to protecting our many natural resources, including our wetlands. I am proud of the staff at the Environmental Protection Division for the hard work they do to keep Orange County green. As always, if you have any questions about Orange County’s wetland preservation efforts or any other county issue, please do not hesitate to contact me or my aide, Edgar Robinson. We can be reached at 407-836-7350 or by email and [email protected].