Amid proposed changes to conservation law, can Florida serve as a cautionary tale for NZ?

Unchecked commercial interests have left wild places in their state in poor shape, say Florida conservationists. With the Conservation Amendment Bill still live after a partial backtrack, they’re warning New Zealand not to let it happen here.

Environmentalists in Florida are expressing concern over New Zealand’s proposed Conservation Amendment Bill, which they warn could enable the kind of unchecked development that they say has caused irreversible damage to their state.

Known for gators, guns, golf courses and theme parks, Florida operates very differently to New Zealand – especially when it comes to relationships between commercial interests and biodiversity.

The Conservation Amendment Bill (CAB) could change that; requiring the Department of Conservation to weigh economic opportunities, and devolving decision making around protected land to a handful of people. While public pressure led to conservation minister Tama Potaka announcing that clauses relating to the “disposal or exchange” of conservation land would be removed, concerns about the bill remain.

“As a lifelong conservationist who has watched Florida get paved over in my lifetime, believe me, it could happen to New Zealand,” says Lesley Blackner, an environmental lawyer based in West Palm Beach.

Over the last 60 years, Blackner has seen Florida’s population explode from a New Zealand-sized 5 million to over 23 million in 2025 – including millions more tourists. “Florida has always prioritised economic development,” she says, describing decades of legal battles she fought on behalf of conservation interests against developers.

“Our laws, our society and our politics are focused on the next 10,000 people moving in,” continues Blackner. “In Florida, we have government of, by and for the developer.”

Florida is one of America’s most biodiverse regions, supporting panthers, bears, alligators and more than 500 species of birds across 80 unique ecosystems. Still, even the most optimistic conservationists admit that unchecked commercial interests have left wild places in poor shape.

From 1950, Florida lost over 44% of its historic wetlands to urban development and agriculture; over half the state’s vertebrates are experiencing population decline.

Wetland loss and industrial mismanagement have directly impacted people, too. The state’s drinking water is fed by aquifers that are under strain thanks, in part, to overloaded septic systems and urban runoff.

Deprived of areas that naturally absorb and control excess water, Florida’s low-lying urban centres are now at greater risk from climate change. Hurricanes, floods and rising sea levels pose more risk to Floridians than they ever have before.

Veteran conservationist Clay Henderson says weak foundational laws protecting biodiversity have made an uphill battle for those hoping to save what’s left of their wild places. Henderson co-authored the Florida Water and Land Legacy Initiative, the largest conservation funding programme in US history. He’s among the United States’ foremost authorities on protected land.

While he is quick to admit New Zealand and Florida law are “apples and oranges”, he expresses concern about the Conservation Amendment Bill, in particular section 6(ea), that mandates the Department of Conservation:

“recognise the economic opportunities that arise from the use and development of land and other natural resources and historic resources managed by the Department, and to enable this use and development to the greatest extent practicable under this Act and other enactments.”

“It’s a bad presumption,” says Henderson. “If you’re going to have lands designated for conservation, then you need to […] protect those conservation values above everything else.”

Henderson points to a landmark legal fight concerning Split Oak Forest, a conservation site in central Florida. “This property had various layers of protection on it, and [developers] peeled it back one layer at a time,” says Henderson.

These developers were the Central Florida Expressway (CFX) Authority, who declined to comment for this story. CFX hoped to build a highway through Split Oak Forest. The group asked two conservation authorities – the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFW) – to release protections on the reserve that, decades earlier, were established to last “in perpetuity”.

Despite a massive wave of protest, the authorities caved; approving a deal where CFX could develop a portion of the reserve in exchange for $US60 million and 627 hectares of nearby ranch land.

Conservationists argued that this set a dangerous precedent: if state-appointed boards can vote to dissolve “permanent” protections for a toll road, then no conservation land is truly safe. The dispute has since moved to court, with administrative and legal battles ongoing.

“The problem is that we’ve bent over backwards to give local governments the ability to put in [roads] wherever they want,” says Henderson. “If your presumption is that you want to maximise the economic development of conservation property, then that’s going to be the result.”

Split Oak mirrors 2017’s Ruataniwha Dam case, where NZ Forest and Bird took DOC to court when the agency tried to enable the disposal of protected land for a $900-million dam project in Hawke’s Bay.

In this instance, however, the protected land won out.

Forest and Bird’s chief adviser Richard Capie says the CAB would have almost certainly resulted in a different ruling. “Section six would let that [disposal] happen,” says Capie. “It’s that powerful.”

Capie adds that 2024’s controversial streamlining law, the Fast-Track Approvals Act, also allows for similar outcomes, pointing towards what he considers a worrying trend that has already unfolded in Florida.

“Conservation considerations don’t carry the same weight,” he adds. “You now don’t just need the Conservation Amendment Bill to [change] Ruataniwha.”

Capie is also concerned about provisions in the CAB that concentrate decisions in the hands of a single minister or agency.

Florida journalist Craig Pittman is especially alarmed at this part of our CAB. “That’s been the goal of developers,” he says, “to make land use strictly a decision by one person if possible, two or three at the most, and not let the public near it.”

Pittman alleges the FWC, one of the two agencies that enabled the highway project on Split Oak Forest, is too aligned with commercial interests.

Its board shows six out of seven commissioners have development ties or are developers themselves. One commissioner, Rodney Barreto, applied to his own agency in 2018 to build 330 condos next to a nature preserve. There are currently no scientists on the FWC board.

Capie believes that while New Zealand is a long way off from this kind of industry capture, the CAB obscures conservation decision making in ways that, like processes in Florida, are undemocratic and murky.

“[Transparency] is not necessarily a case of just stopping something,” says Capie. “It’s about being able to assess what’s being proposed and making a good decision. If you remove public participation, that process will be worse.”

In recent years, increased public participation has led to several legal victories in Florida that conservationists like Blackner and Henderson are proud of.

In 2025, organised protests and an online petition with over 50,000 signatures stopped the development of 242 hectares of protected land in north Florida. The legislative response, introducing a required 30 days’ public notice before conservation land sales, passed the Florida House in February 2026.

Capie is similarly heartened by New Zealand’s response to perceived encroachments on its wild places, citing 55,000 anti-CAB public submissions provoked by the bill’s first draft. The scale of public outcry forced Potaka to announce edits to the bill’s provisions – though changes may not involve section 6(ea).

Blackner says protests have reached a fever pitch as Floridians find the negative side effects of overdevelopment too intrusive to ignore. She expresses sincere hope that New Zealanders study her state as a cautionary tale.

“Don’t let them screw up New Zealand, dear,” she says. “Ya’ll don’t know how good you’ve got it.”