1987 SCHNOES AND HUMPHREY: TERRESTRIAL COMMUNITIES IN FLORIDA 57

 INTRODUCTION

 About 5180 square kilometers in central Florida have large phosphate
resources accessible by surface mines. Beginning in the 1880s, mining
has concentrated in the northern portion of the district, and about 750
square kilometers have been mined. These northern reserves will be
depleted in the next 10 to 30 years, and mining operations will shift to
the southern part of the district.
 Loss of valuable environments and wildlife because of surface mining
for phosphate has become a major conflict in Florida's land use planning.
Mining of a non-renewable resource is a temporary but total use of the
land, and its destructiveness makes mining unpopular among citizens
whose individual benefits from the activity are small. However, demand
for fertilizer to grow human food is increasing, and mining is expected to
occur throughout the phosphate district. Government's challenge is to
permit the extraction of necessary resources while minimizing losses over
the long term. Consequently regulatory agencies need to focus on min-
ing and reclamation practices that return land to attractive and useful
conditions. At present, neither the preferred conditions nor appropriate
reclamation practices have been determined or agreed upon by mining
companies and regulatory agencies. Carefully considered criteria for quality
need to be established, and future land use options (residential/industrial
development, agriculture/silviculture, water storage, wildlife areas) need
to be retained.
 Because mineral extraction technology has become more efficient and
because pumping rights for water (a limiting factor for mine operation)
have been regulated as a per-acre water crop, mining companies have
tried to hold their lands as cheaply as possible for eventual re-mining
and to qualify for consumptive water-use permits. Consequently no in-
terest has operated to return the land to any other use, and no intrinsic
incentive for reclamation has existed. Lands that have escaped re-mining
have undergone natural recovery without prescribed manipulation of soil,
topography, or pioneer biota.
 Reclamation of newly mined lands became required by a 1975 state
severance-tax law. A revision of the law in 1978 provided a mechanism
to use tax money to reclaim pre-1975 mined lands and required mining
companies to reclaim future mined lands as an internal feature of their
operating economies. During the past decade, county governments have
imposed reclamation requirements with specific regulations designed to
protect the future contribution of mined lands to the property tax base.
County and state regulations often conflict, and they have poorly under-
stood implications for biological recovery.
 The shift of new mining southward and the areawide practice of rec-