Carlton and Carlton Ranch
Commissioner's Agricultural Environmental Leadership Award
Dennis Carlton is a seventh-generation Floridian. In 1974, he began his operation, which now includes 35,000 acres of Audubon Ranch, Carlton and Carlton Ranch, citrus operations, strawberry farms and a real estate company.
Carlton has cooperated with a public-private partnership to install a large wetland and hydrologic restoration project on the Cone Ranch property he leases from Hillsborough County. Due to the Cone Ranch Wetland Restoration Project’s success, the land is now home to an abundance of birds and wildlife. Carlton also reclaimed 1,200 acres of former phosphate land into pasture and created 120 acres of wetland marshes. The Cone Ranch Wetland Restoration Project is one of the largest wetland restorations completed by private ownership in the Tampa Bay area.
Dennis Carlton has also been involved with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Water Quality and Quantity Best Management Practices (BMP) Program since 2011. Some of the Carlton and Carlton properties are within areas that are impaired for fecal coliforms and/or nutrients and are undergoing development of or have an adopted Florida Department of Environmental Protection Basin Management Action Plans (BMAP). The Hillsborough River watershed has an adopted BMAP in which Carlton was the first to enroll. Carlton also has 13 Notices of Intent to Implement BMPs for the majority of his properties, demonstrating his willingness to show his compliance with state water quality standards and environmental stewardship.
The Southwest Florida Water Management District approved Carlton’s project for a 253-acre property outside of Plant City. The project includes the use of an existing 43-acre reservoir to offset Upper Floridan aquifer groundwater used for bed preparation, crop establishment, supplemental irrigation and cold protection of over 80. acres of strawberries. The surface water offset from this project will reduce groundwater annual average use by 69,900 gallons per day and frost/freeze groundwater use by 1,362,800 gallons.
Carlton ranches with a protective eye on Florida’s sensitive environment. His low-impact ranching operations and projects have guaranteed environmental enhancement of the lands he owns and leases.
