Florida Tomorrow is a place...
where our natural resources and rights are protected.
On Florida’s shores, where erosion and development are squeezing coastal animals out of their habitats and homeowners are losing backyard beaches to the sea, UF law students drew a line in the sand.
Ryan Osborne and Heather Brown collaborated with graduate students in wildife ecology and interdisciplinary ecology to help a sea turtle advocacy group draft legislation that put purchasers of coastal property on notice that they are buying an eroding shoreline that they share with endangered sea turtles and other vulnerable species.
That endeavor illustrates what UF’s Environmental and Land Use Law Program is all about, says Alyson Flournoy, its director. The program, she explains, is meant to instill in its students vigorous independence and professionalism — essential qualities for protecting the state’s natural resources against damage and contamination.
To accomplish that, the integration of land use law and environmental law is essential, she says. So is Flournoy and her team’s association with UF’s Center for Governmental Responsibility, as well as their ties with an array of other UF academic departments — wildlife ecology, environmental engineering, urban and regional planning, and agriculture.
Students in the Environmental and Land Use Law Program are also active in UF’s Conservation Clinic, directed by Tom Ankersen. It’s there that students truly take charge.
Erika Zimmerman was one of those students. She drafted a petition to UNESCO on behalf of the Belize Institute of Environmental Law and Policy to list Belize’s Barrier Reef as a threatened world heritage site. Her petition, noted by both The New York Times and BBC, inspired two other petitions filed on behalf of Mount Everest and a World Heritage site in Peru.
Ankersen notes that the Conservation Clinic and its students serve as a model for international initiatives in developing countries such as Costa Rica, where a joint UF-University of Costa Rica program allows students to work across cultural boundaries. Of course, issues closer to home are also actively addressed by the Conservation Clinic.
“Our program has had demonstrable success providing state and local governments with policy approaches that have been enacted into law,” he says.
