A little less than 24 hours after Susie Wiles, the chief of staff to President Donald J. Trump, blasted the proposed trade of 600 acres in the Guana River Wildlife Management Area to a private developer as an “outrageous” land grab in a statement to The Tributary, state officials said the idea had been pulled from consideration. A letter from the developer’s attorney to state regulators, first reported by Florida Politics, blamed “public sentiment resulting from misinformation” and said the developer — whose identity was not disclosed in state records beyond a generic LLC — was withdrawing its application.
Long before her affiliation with Trump, Wiles was a key Northeast Florida political adviser who worked on many environmental causes. Her assessment of the proposed Guana land swap was blistering: She called it a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and called for the Acquisition and Restoration Council, an obscure government body, to kill the idea.
Wiles’ intervention turbocharged what was already a furious and rapidly organizing opposition in St. Johns County to the proposal. State records and officials didn’t identify the developer or disclose what the plans would be, but word had spread that a golf course was at least part of the plan.
The developer, identified in documents only as The Upland LLC, offered up in exchange a patchwork of about 3,000 acres of land in St. Johns, Lafayette, Osceola and Volusia counties. DEP staffers concluded the trade would offer a “net positive conservation benefit” because it would add more than 2,000 acres to the state’s Wildlife Corridor, a network of millions of acres of parks, wildlife management areas and forests. But locals questioned how donated land in other counties would adequately offset losing hundreds of acres of the Guana Preserve.
The decision would have ultimately needed signoff from Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet. That could have been a tinderbox for DeSantis, who once represented the region in Congress.
Nate Monroe is the executive editor of The Tributary. He can be reached at nate.monroe@jaxtrib.org.
