Northeast Florida is one of the most biologically important places in the United States
You have these huge bluffs, high sand ridges and then you’ve got swamps that are full
of all kinds of wild life and purple swamp iris'
You can see shore birds along the beach, you can see herons and egrets, and water birds
in the creeks into the wetlands.
You can see song birds in the trees, see eagles soaring overhead
There were clusters of trees for fox, squirrels and gopher tortoises and things like that
When the sun is kind of low in the sky sitting on the salt marsh, it’s the most beautiful place in Florida
It is truly a garden of Eden in so many respects
We have to be stewards
The balance between nature and people is to remember we are nature.
And so, our neighborhood is our habitat
We want things to be part of a connected set of corridors.
But we don’t want to just protect land for the benefit of wildlife.
We want to make sure that land is available for people that actually enjoy it
The whole basis for Wildlight is live, work and play
It’s going to be a place where you walk out your back door and get on a on a hiking
biking trail and go through a swamp and you know ride down a railroad that John Muir walked down
when he was walking across Florida I think that’s going to be cool
Rayonier actually protected the land even more than best management practices dictated
That stuff's going to be preserved
It's probably going to be the largest conservation easement in the history of the Nassau County
We like the idea of having the most environmentally friendly footprint as possible
The idea of taking an area that’s gonna have people living in it and setting it aside
greenways and wildlife corridors and giving people the opportunity to live in and among nature.
That’s a very very appealing idea
I think if you have a community with the folks in the community are part of the stewardship solution.
I think that's huge