Collier Enterprises has submitted an application to Collier County seeking approval of the second of three areas to be designated as Stewardship Sending Areas (SSA) under the county’s Rural Lands Stewardship Program.

As part of the planning for its new Town of Big Cypress, the company plans to preserve more than 10,000 acres of environmentally significant wetlands and wildlife habitat. The land preserved within the three SSAs will help protect the Camp Keais Strand and Okaloacoochee Slough and enhance the ecological health of both, according to Collier Enterprises President and CEO Tom Flood.

“This is an important early step in creating our new town. The SSA designations we’re proposing are the missing pieces to the puzzle, helping to create a 15 mile long wildlife corridor along the Camp Keais Strand that will connect critical habitat and expanding preservation in the Okaloacoochee Slough,” Flood said.

The Collier County Rural Lands Stewardship program, approved in 2002, encourages land owners to preserve large areas of environmentally important land and to locate new, more compact, development on less sensitive lands. By designating SSAs in and near its Big Cypress Stewardship District, Collier Enterprises will receive stewardship credits that will allow the company to build its town on less sensitive land along the district’s western boundary.

“Collier County's visionary Rural Land Stewardship Plan established a 25-year blueprint to permanently protect the eastern county's most critical environmental systems,” said Alan Reynolds, AICP, chairman and CEO of WilsonMiller. “This Stewardship Sending Area together with previously approved Sending Areas brings us a major step closer to achieving the ultimate goal of a continuous wetland and wildlife corridor linking the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed and the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge."

This second SSA application covers approximately 5,314 acres in the middle and southern portions of the Camp Keais Strand on both sides of Oil Well Road.

The first SSA application, submitted in October and due to come before the commission for a vote in early 2008, spans 1,720-acres at the top of the Strand immediately north of Immokalee Road.

A third application will be submitted later this month and will designate a nearly 3,100-acre parcel in the Okaloacoochee habitat stewardship area, just northeast of the town of Immokalee.

The Town of Big Cypress will be a new sustainable community located in eastern Collier County that will include a maximum of 9,000 residential units on about 2,800 acres as well as commercial space for jobs, shopping, services, schools, health care, recreation, and civic and cultural facilities.