A preservation group has raised enough money to buy 14 acres of natural land just south of Tarpon Springs.
The announcement caps four years of fundraising for the West Klosterman Preserve.
Several anonymous large donors helped the group reach their goal. Tex Carter, president of the WK Preservation group, says the key was Pinellas County agreeing to chip in half of the $3 million cost.
Tex Carter, president of the preservation group, says that helped spur donations from larger donors.
"When people put their mind to it, when they identify something that needs to be preserved, and when it's effectively communicated, you can make it happen," he said. "And the county made the difference."
Carter says the county would like to work with the group again to help preserve more land in Pinellas.
"They see this as a good private-public partnership for land preservation and have said that they will work with us and help us identify properties that the county would like to take on," he said.
The Pinellas school board wanted to sell the surplus land, and gave the group a series of deadlines to raise the money and keep it out of the hands of developers. The school board has until April to close the deal.
Florida currently has about 10 million acres - nearly one-third of the state - in protected public and private lands. Four and a half million acres are wetlands and federal holdings, such as Everglades National Park. Since Florida Forever - the state's main land preservation program - was launched in 2001, it has purchased nearly 900,000 acres at a cost of over $3 billion.
In 2022, Klosterman group organizer Donald Richardson said the focus of that program has been on larger, rural tracts. They really don't care about this postage-stamp parcel of only 14 acres.
So it's up to "locals" like him to preserve smaller, overlooked places.
“So if you find that open space gives you that piece of mind, then what you find that people are doing is to say, I need a cause,” Richardson said. “I need something that gives me a place to go. A place to sit. A place to get away from all that noise and stuff like that.”
He says 98 percent of the Florida scrub in Pinellas County already has been developed, and this is a place worth saving.
The preserve will be joined with the 76-acre Mariner's Point Management Area next door.
