Prime acreage: Scofield family offers part of pioneer Half Circle L Ranch to Conservation Collier

A pristine expanse of a pioneer ranch east of Immokalee potentially worth more than $10 million is being offered for sale to Collier County's land preservation program.

The Half Circle L Ranch totals nearly 10,000 acres spanning Collier and Hendry counties, but only the most environmentally sensitive 3,300 acres of the Collier side of the ranch is up for review by the Conservation Collier program.

It would be the largest Conservation Collier purchase to date, beating out the 2009 purchase of the 2,500-acre Pepper Ranch next to Lake Trafford in Immokalee for $32 million.

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The offer raises the stakes of ongoing discussions about the future of the county's voter-approved land preservation program.

This summer, county commissioners refused to levy a new tax for Conservation Collier acquisitions but said they plan to put it to voters again in November 2018.

It is unclear how commissioners might treat Conservation Collier in the upcoming budget or what sort of acquisitions commissioners might favor. 

Earlier this week, the Conservation Collier advisory board voted unanimously to move forward the Half Circle L Ranch offer after it met initial screening criteria for purchase.

Advisory board members lauded the land's beauty and environmental value, but some questioned the potential purchase.

"It looks like an amazing opportunity, absolutely astonishing," board member Michael Seif said.

Chairwoman Patricia Sherry said the program should focus on preserving land closer to the urban area.

"To get taxpayers to back acquisition of open space, we have to get them better access," she said.

The part of the ranch under consideration by Conservation Collier is a mix of dry and wet habitats bordering other preserve lands to the north, west and south.

The land is part of the Okaloacoochee Slough that feeds the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve and the Big Cypress National Preserve, and it is prime habitat for a diverse mix of species, including the endangered Florida panther. It also includes two Seminole Indian burial grounds, according to a Conservation Collier report.

Collier County pioneer Miles Scofield Jr. started the ranch, which has been in the Scofield family for four generations.

The Scofields run 800 head of cattle on the ranch; a farming company grows everything from eggplant to watermelon in fields not part of the proposed sale. The ranch also has two hunting camps that also are not part of the offered land.

"It would be a good fit (for Conservation Collier)," ranch partner Rocky Scofield said.

When advisory board members asked Scofield for a price, he estimated the cost at $4,000 per acre, or about $13.2 million. Real estate appraisals would determine any actual cost.

The purchase would come with the ability to sever development credits and environmental mitigation credits that could be sold or used by the county, defraying the cost of the purchase, Scofield said.

The Scofields had severed development credits from the ranch as part of the county's Rural Lands Stewardship Area growth plan, but they backed out of the deal when the real estate market crashed and the credits went unsold.

Half Circle L Ranch has been at the center of other attempts to preserve it, but none of those came to fruition.

In 2003, the ranch was added to the state's Florida Forever list for possible preservation; in 2007, the county studied the possibility of buying 5,300 acres of the ranch to meet mitigation requirements for its road projects.

In 1997, the Scofields and the South Florida Water Management District tried to negotiate a land swap involving the ranch and public land in Hendry County.