Florida Native License Tag Voucher

The Florida Native Plant Society is a grass-roots non-proft whose mission is to

Preserve, Conserve, and Restore the native plants and native plant Communities of Florida.

We implement this mission through

1.  Hands-on land management including controlled burns, conservation land ownership, nuisance species removal, etc.

2.  Public education - teaching Florida citizens practical ways to simultaneously protect our natural resources and reduce management costs.  We do this both by working with our educators and by direct outreach to the public.

3.  Supporting programs to support Florida's natural heritage 

4.  Support for rare species, both rare plants and rare animals

5.  Information on using native species and good land management techniques to maintain and improve water quality in our springs, streams, and estuaries. 

6.  Information on using native landscapes to manage water quantity in streams and lakes -- as in not wasting water and by using natural systems to buffer streams and neighborhoods against flooding and drought.

7.  Support for policies that enable our ecosystems to be managed properly and thus to be recreational resources for outdoor activities such as bird watching, hunting, boating -- all of which support our tourism economy.

And many other things.

We work to conserve native habitats through 1) purchase, 2) sound management, and 3) protection.  Through this, we help protect water quality, wildlife habitats, and habitats for unique Florida plants.

We help in the management of public and private lands to improve habitats for wildlife and the plants they depend on.  We work to restore degraded lands.

Land Management Partners

Florida's nearly 10 million acres of conservation lands require active stewardship to maintain them as viable ecosystems and as places for people to use for educational and recreational purposes. As part of this process, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) conducts periodic reviews of state properties acquired under voter-initiated conservation purchases. Since 2009, FNPS members have played a part in nearly all of these reviews.  On site land management reviews ensure that the property is being cared for in accordance with approved management plans. The success of our reviews of FDEP properties led several of Florida's Water Management Districts to request our services for reviews of their own Land Management Plans. The success of the Land Management Partners Committee (LMP) led to its establishment as a stand alone committee in 2010.

FNPS is committed to assisting landowners and land managers in many ways, including restoration projects, habitat and rare plant population monitoring, seed collection, and plants surveys.

Hands on Management

FNPS not only assists in management planning, we manage lands.  Some of our volunteers are certified burn managers. We assist small land owners with small scale burns needed manage their properties.  Our volunteers also work with the managers of learning centers and local preserves to both plan for management, and implement it.

Nuisance Species Control

Our volunteers both lead and participate in nuisance species control projects, usually on public conservation properties.

Plant Relocations and Restorations

When properties are developed and roadways & utilities built, it is inevitable that sometimes rare plant habitats are impacted.  We work with agencies and land owners to relocate plants, especially rare one, from sites to be impacted to public preserve lands that have plant communities in need of restoration.

Urban Restoration

We work with individual landowners to teach and implement management practices beneficial to wildlife including birds, small mammals, butterflies, insect pollinators, and game animals.  We often do this at the level of individual lots in urban areas with demonstrated success at bringing appropriate wildlife back into our neighborhoods.  We teach about appropriate plants.  We teach about management to conserve water and maintain or improve water quality.