The Rural Lands Stewardship (RLS) program is an innovative approach to land-use  that  allows for and directs development to low-impact areas, protects threatened and endangered species habitats and areas of special importance (wetlands, historic or culturally significant sites, floodplains, important groundwater recharge and water resources, etc.). Instead of forbidding development on these lands, thus preventing landowners from  benefittiing economically from development, the RLS ensures that they are able to share in the profits generated by land development elsewhere in the RLS area.

 

American Diversified Enterprises' Managing Director, CJ Evans, helped develop and establish this program in Florida in the 1990s. He began by assembling a group of landowners who had Priority 1 Florida Panther habitat on their lands who were opposed to the burdensome approaches government agencies had been trying time and time again to impose on them to protect these habitats. He asked instead, "What will work for you?" That was the guiding principle throughout the development of the RLS.

 

The RLS emerged as a landowner-driven collaboration with government agencies and environmental groups that rewards (rather than punishes) landowners for the areas of special importance on their lands, including the habitats that support threatened and endangered species such as the Florida Panther. This is done without imposing burdensome regulations, without interfering with the landowners' enjoyment and operation of their lands, and without preventing landowners from obtaining value from residential and commercial development.

 

The first RLS, in Collier County, Florida, established an economic value system across a 300-square-mile area, based on a series of multipliers that were assigned to the various natural resources within the RLS area, with higher value resources being given higher values.

 

Development in a designated RLS area is directed to low-impact areas. These lands do not have any units assigned for residential or commercial development. Instead, developers must obtain these units by paying landowners to place a conservation easement on the high-value natural resources on their lands.

 

The price paid by the developer is determined on a per-acre basis by the multipliers assigned to the natural resources on the lands over which a conservation easement is placed. For example, Priority 1 Panther habit carries a multiplier of 3. Thus, to obtain units for development a developer has to pay 3x the current market value of lands with Priority 1 habit.

 

The higher the  price,  the more valuable the natural resource that is protected, and the more development units the developer receives.

 

This allows the landowners to benefit from the economic value of development  while continuing to own and manager their lands, with the lands for which payment has been made covered by a perpetual conservation easement.

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The RLS has recently been supplemented by a Payment for Ecosystem Services pilot program initiated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission through which landowners receive a per-acre payment for maintaining and improving Panther habitat on their property.

 

The Florida Panther population, which had declined to only 20 individuals in the wild at the onset of the "Panthers and Private Lands" project now numbers more than 200 individuals in the wild.

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Click here to view a description of the Rural Lands Stewardship Program

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