How land conservation drives economic development in Jacksonville

Key points:

June 2026 — Across Northeast Florida, conservation has become a driver of economic development. From Nassau County’s effort to link Cumberland Island to the Okefenokee Refuge, to St. Johns County’s dedicated land-acquisition program, to the fast-expanding Ocala-to-Osceola Wildlife Corridor, local governments and land trusts are treating protected land as economic infrastructure. It’s a foundation for tourism, recreation, specialty agriculture, and climate resilience.

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The conservation play

The Northeast Florida region sits within one of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s most ecologically complex jurisdictions. The Northeast District covers portions of the Atlantic coastal plain and counties bordering the Gulf of America, encompassing more rivers than any other DEP regulatory district, including the St. Johns, Nassau, Tolomato, Suwannee, and Santa Fe. That density of natural assets is reshaping how local governments and private developers frame their pitch to investors.

St. Johns County has built a dedicated land acquisition program and continued to expand conservation areas year over year. “The county has made significant investments in parks and green space, and there is a dedicated program that acquires land for conservation,” Scott Maynard, executive director at the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Council told Invest:. 

Flagler County, managing agricultural heritage, suburban growth, and a beach economy, has made preservation a focus point. “Our priority is to preserve the environment, protect water resources, and take a smart-growth approach to development,” said Tywan Arrington, economic development manager at Flagler County, in an interview with Invest:.

The North Florida Land Trust (NFLT) has moved quickly. In recent months, it brokered a 518-acre easement in Putnam County within the Ocala-to-Osceola (O2O) Wildlife Corridor — a tract valued at approximately $1.18 million, bordered on three sides by the St. Johns River Water Management District’s Lake George conservation area. A separate 861-acre acquisition in Bradford County, funded at $5.42 million through the Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program, pushed the O2O Corridor past 1.6 million total protected acres. 

Additionally, the state of Florida approved $5.6 million to protect another 2,060 acres in Putnam County — part of a $27 million statewide conservation push — on land that produces honey and fresh produce within the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

The Florida Forever initiative, a long-standing state conservation funding program, provided the framework for a project Nassau County leaders call “Atlantic to Okefenokee (A20)” — a conservation corridor running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Okefenokee Swamp.

From land to revenue

The economic logic behind these acquisitions is protected land generates tourism, recreation, and agriculture revenue that undeveloped parcels often cannot. In Northeast Florida, that dynamic is playing out across multiple sectors simultaneously.

Agrotourism and agriculture have long anchored the regional economy, particularly in Flagler, Putnam, and Bradford counties. The Putnam County acquisition, for example, involves a working farm actively combating food-desert conditions in surrounding communities. That dual function of conservation and food production represents the kind of blended asset that draws ESG-oriented investors.

Eco-tourism is the higher-growth opportunity. St. Johns County is advancing the River-to-Sea Loop, a 260-mile shared-use trail crossing five Northeast Florida counties. The trail connects into the East Coast Greenway — a 3,000-mile network linking Maine to Florida through 15 states — positioning Northeast Florida as a node in a national recreational infrastructure system. For local businesses along the corridor, that’s foot traffic and cyclist spending with a long runway.

In Jacksonville, Halff, a full-service infrastructure consulting firm, identified trail master planning, water-focused landscape work, sports and entertainment, and resilience as four of its priority growth sectors. “That is the No. 1 goal: building a diversified, resilient client portfolio across public and private clients and multiple project types,” said Joseph Loretta, director in Planning and Landscape Architecture for Florida and Georgia at Halff. 

Hardening the foundation

Local economic development in a coastal region carries a structural risk for investors: climate exposure. Flooding, storm surge, and aging infrastructure threaten to erode the very asset base that makes Northeast Florida attractive. Leaders across the region are treating resilience as a core investment needed for long-term economic impact.

Groundwork Jacksonville is working through engineering plans for a $150 million restoration of Hogans Creek — a project with both ecological and historical significance, according to Loretta. The Eastside neighborhood the creek runs through was partially spared in Jacksonville’s catastrophic 1901 fire precisely because of its marshland geography. “The fire burned 146 blocks in Jacksonville, but when it reached the Eastside, the marshland and Hogan’s Creek helped preserve the neighborhood,” Suzanne Pickett, CEO at the Historic Eastside Community Development Corporation, told Invest:. Restoring that system protects downstream infrastructure and reinforces flood-mitigation capacity at scale.

The broader design principle is being stated explicitly at the project level. “Every project needs to be contemplating resilience,” Loretta said. Framing resilience as a standard design requirement signals a maturation in how the region’s development community approaches capital risk.

The near-term signal to watch is permitting and state appropriations for the O2O Corridor and the Atlantic-to-Okefenokee project. As those conservation buffers solidify, the counties they cross become more attractive for eco-tourism development, specialty agriculture, and trail-adjacent commercial real estate. 

Want more? Read the Invest: Jacksonville report.