In a departure from the way Florida created its award-winning park system, the state's plan calls for letting private companies bid on designing, building and operating the campgrounds on taxpayer-owned land, said DEP's Florida Park Service director Donald Forgioni....
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The idea of privatizing state and national parks is fairly new, but it's been endorsed by such pundits as Glenn Beck, who last year said, "I don't know why this doesn't make sense to more people."
Honeymoon Island's lack of campsites is not uncommon. Forgioni said about two-thirds of Florida's 160 state parks have no camping.
The 53 state parks that do allow camping offer 3,501 family campsites, and they are usually booked solid, Forgioni said. More than 2 million people camped in state parks last year, generating more than $15.5 million for the DEP — but the state wants to boost those revenues even higher.
"We anticipate it working like this: The private sector designs, builds and operates the campground, including collecting the overnight fees," he said. "Then we get a percentage of their revenue."
He said he had no estimate of how much that might yield but DEP would likely use it to make the state park system more self-sufficient....
...Both Larson and Audubon's Wraithmell said this push is part of an overall initiative of Gov. Rick Scott's administration regarding the use of state lands, which Wraithmell described as "treating our resources as commodities" regardless of whether it's good for the parks or the public.
