The “Great Outdoors Initiative”  is a plan leaked to the media to “redevelop” nine Florida state parks to replace wild lands with golf courses, luxury hotels and lodges, and even pickleball courts. The pickleball courts seem to be a “thin end of the wedge” to get a developer foot in the door for later plans in those same parks. ALL of the targetted parks would get four pickleball courts and a disc golf course.

Honeymoon Island is one of the parks that would initially get the pickleball courts and disc golf, no doubt to be later followed by the full programs of 18 holes of golf and a luxury resort. This plan is sufficiently destructive in and of itself to place at risk the survival of endangered species in the park.

There was talk of a shadowy “nonprofit” called the Tuskegee Dunes Foundation, that tried to poach the name of the famous Tuskegee Airmen. Golf has nothing to do with flying P-51 Mustangs against Nazi Germany, and people allegedly connected to this organization have been furiously backpedaling. Capping matters, the CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Museum reported his organization has never heard of the Tuskegee Dunes Foundation.