Mary E. Dawson, Chair
of the Board Linda Green,
Executive Director
Post Office
Telephone 772-555-1111
Join
us in preserving …
…and
enhancing our natural wonderland!
Sustaining Community Lands, Inc., is a
Florida-chartered not-for-profit organization dedicated to finding a workable
balance between the competing desires to continue building homes and villages
in Martin and surrounding counties with the need to preserve our beautiful and
functional natural areas.
Development is coming…
As more and more people learn about the unspoiled beauty of
Martin and adjoining counties, there’ll be increasing demand for development. There is already a strong push by development
interests for our governmental leaders to authorize both new
neighborhoods, new gated communities, and 20-acre ranchettes. Preservation interests, on the other hand,
want to lock in vast tracks of natural area, both “uplands” and wetlands,
preventing any development from occurring there forever.
Sustaining
Community Lands believes that both can occur…
Sustaining Community Lands is a dynamic regional agency
dedicated to
providing for sensible development in conjunction
with the Martin County Comprehensive Plan while building a strong network of
agencies and private organizations whose goal is to preserve wild areas that
will be wonderful for future generations to enjoy but which, at the same time,
maintain an urgently-needed ecological infrastructure.
Wild
areas, particularly wetlands, must be connected…
In recent years, developers have had increased environmental sensitivity and have tried to incorporate
[!---endif]>what
we call “Pocket Zoos” into their projects.
It is common today to see new developments have lovely lakes, some
productive marshes, and dedicated wild areas.
It was a step in the right direction!
Unfortunately, we’ve learned that deer, and other species must have unbroken
pathways from one region to another.
This ensures an adequate food supply and provides the genetic diversity
needed to sustain breeding populations.
But, our wetlands must
be connected in an unbroken string!
We’re all familiar with the term “
Go
with the flow!
Unlike
lakes and marshes in many areas of the country, our wetlands are all a part of
an intricate webwork of wetlands that absolutely
require an unbroken connection in order to survive. Water flows down to us from the north, up in
the
New
environmental knowledge leads to new ways of laying
out and building our human communities!
Instead of urban sprawl leading to an unbroken patchwork of
dwellings and commercial areas continuing out through the suburbs with human
construction completely eliminating natural areas, we need a new way of
proceeding with development.
And, we have it!
We here at the Sustaining Community Lands organization are the lead
liaison agency for bringing together various governmental, civil, development,
and environmental interests to build an expansive network designed to both
permit new homes and businesses to be built while maintaining the
inter-connectedness of our precious natural areas.
If
we continue along our current path, we will gradually overrun all the natural
areas between US-1 and , flowing into suburban neighborhoods and gated
communities, and eventually the remaining unspoiled regions will be broken up
into 20-acre ranchettes.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Forests,
hammocks, meadows, and those all-important wetlands, will all have fallen
beneath the grinding tracks of the bulldozer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:290.25pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:2.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;
color:#333399'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:290.25pt;margin-bottom:
0in;margin-left:2.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;
color:#333399'>We are working to change that picture of the Future Martin County!<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>We and the conscientious and forward-thinking
people, businesses, and agencies with whom we’re working are designing new
clustered communities, delightful living environments with “downtown” areas,
business and commercial districts, hospitals, schools, hotels, and recreational
areas, apartment, condo, and single family home housing (including the
all-important “workforce” housing), and then at the outer edges, 20-acre
ranchettes.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Then, as one keeps going
outward from the core, you will enter open lands, unmolested Nature!<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>A few miles further, </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
id=)
you’ll
encounter another community like the one described above, then another, and
another. Each will be modern and
exciting places to live and work…but each will be an “island” in a sea of
preserved natural areas. Our wild
animals will find unbroken, unpaved, and unfenced habitat in between these new
towns…and…water will be able to continue its essential southward flow
unimpeded.
We’re working to construct a beautiful limited-access
north-south scenic highway corridor paralleling US-1 in the western
portions of Martin and St. Lucie Counties.
And, we are in the process now of acquiring lands in order to create the
Greenway
mentioned above, an unbroken swath of productive, flowing, wetlands from the Kissisimee area, running through western Martin County.
Join us, please, in making the Future Martin County a beautiful
and comfortable place to live, surrounded by some of the most delightful and
important natural habitat existing in Florida!
