Conservation Lands — Indian River County, Florida

The county GIS Conservation Lands layer lists 38 tracts and easements from Sebastian to the Oslo Road shoreline, and their surveyed acres add up to about 12,295 acres.

That total is a sum, not a published figure. Each record in the county Conservation Lands GIS layer carries a SURV_ACRES value, and the layer returns 38 records. The single largest is the Carson Platt Estate at 11800 County Road 512, Fellsmere, at 5,425.42 surveyed acres, a tract the layer also names St Sebastian River State Park. The smallest is Boat Club Island in Vero Beach, also listed as Spoil Island IR25, at 0.94 acres.

Grouping the records by the town in each address field shows where the land sits. The table adds the surveyed acres for each group; the addresses are postal towns, not city limits, so a tract with a Sebastian or Vero Beach address may lie in the unincorporated county.

Not every record is a walkable preserve. Five are easements or west county tracts, and none of them has an entry in the county Conservation Lands roster: the Padgett Branch Easements at 23955 State Road 60 (1,587.66 acres), the Sand Lakes Tract (1,259.02), the Sexton Ranch Easements on 82nd Avenue (472.14), the Corrigan Easement (455.83) and the Pressley NAWCA Tract (349.90), all from the GIS layer. Together those five hold 4,124.55 acres, about a third of the countywide total. Three more records, the Korangy Tract and the Kennedy and Lier buffers on Jungle Trail and Wildlife Way, are tagged as part of Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Among the county preserves with their own tract pages, Oslo Riverfront, Hallstrom Farmstead and Captain Forster Hammock list hours of 7:30 am to sunset, Lost Tree Islands lists sunrise to sunset, and Jones' Pier on Jungle Trail lists no hours.

Oslo Riverfront is the largest open preserve on the mainland. Its tract page gives 298 acres of mature coastal hammock, scrubby flatwoods and estuarine wetlands on Oslo Road east of U.S. 1, with about a mile of trails, boardwalks, an observation tower and a canoe dock to the Indian River Lagoon (Oslo Riverfront tract page). The same page lists hours of 7:30 am to sunset but its description says the public access facilities and trails are open from sunrise to sunset. Parking is at the southwest corner, east of the South Vero Square shopping center, and the trail to the coastal wetlands runs through an impounded estuarine wetland managed by mosquito control.

Hallstrom Farmstead, at 1605 Old Dixie Highway SW in Vero Beach, adds two picnic pavilions, a boardwalk and restrooms to 93 acres of sand pine scrub, maritime hammock and bottomland forest (Hallstrom Farmstead tract page). The county notes that it holds one of the northernmost protected sites for Lakela's mint, a federally endangered plant known only from southern St. Lucie and northern Indian River counties. The farmstead house itself belongs to the Indian River County Historical Society and is open to the public.

Every county tract page in this list bans hunting, fishing and taking plants. Lost Tree Islands is the only one with camping: its tract page allows short-term stays, with fires only in designated pits (Lost Tree Islands tract page).

On Orchid Island and in the lagoon, the county tracts protect mature maritime hammock along Jungle Trail, a restored salt marsh at Jones' Pier and the islands north of the State Road 60 bridge.

Captain Forster Hammock Preserve sits one mile south of County Road 510 on Historic Jungle Trail. The State of Florida owns the 110-acre parcel and Indian River County has managed it since 1994; maritime hammock covers about 68% of the site, which the county calls one of the last mature maritime hammocks in the county (Captain Forster Hammock tract page). Visitors must enter from Jungle Trail, as the preserve has no access to A1A.

Jones' Pier Conservation Area is a 16.5-acre part of an original homestead from the county's late 19th and early 20th century settlement. Indian River County bought it in 2008 from the Jones family with help from the Florida Communities Trust, and the plan for the site uses lagoon water as base flow through created wetlands to build salt marsh and to treat stormwater before it reaches the Indian River Lagoon (Jones Pier tract page). Because the site connects to the lagoon, dogs and other domestic animals are barred.

Lost Tree Islands Conservation Area covers about 508 upland, wetland and submerged acres immediately north of the Merrill Barber Bridge, between the mainland and the barrier island (Lost Tree Islands tract page). It reaches from the McCuller's Point mosquito impoundment south through inner and outer islands and six low spoil islands in Gifford Cut. The county GIS layer records 344.90 surveyed acres for the same tract, while the tract page's 508-acre figure is described as upland, wetland and submerged acres (county GIS layer). Public access is by boat to the dock on the east side of Joe Earman Island.

Along County Road 512 at Fellsmere, the county GIS layer lists the Carson Platt Estate and the Fellsmere Trailhead Preserve, and farther south it lists large easements on State Road 60 and 82nd Avenue.

The county roster places the Carson Platt Estate at 11800 County Road 512 in Fellsmere. The GIS record gives it 5,425.42 surveyed acres and the alternate name St Sebastian River State Park, so that one tract accounts for 44 percent of the summed county total (5,425.42 divided by 12,294.96).

Also on County Road 512, the county GIS layer lists the Fellsmere Trailhead Preserve at 86.84 surveyed acres, with an address of 11200 County Road 512, Fellsmere.

Farther south, the Padgett Branch Easements at 23955 State Road 60 and the Sexton Ranch Easements on 82nd Avenue protect 2,059.80 acres between them (1,587.66 plus 472.14) under the GIS layer. Neither easement appears on the county's Conservation Lands page.

The Board of County Commissioners asked voters in 2022 to allow up to $50,000,000 in general obligation bonds, repaid from property taxes within 20 years, to buy environmentally significant land countywide.

The ballot language came from Resolution 2022-016, passed unanimously on March 8, 2022. It named lagoon restoration, water resources, natural areas, wildlife habitat and drinking water as purposes, allowed public access improvements and required annual independent audits of the spending (Environmental Lands Acquisition Panel page). On June 18, 2024 the Board passed Resolution 2024-029, accepting the Final Environmental Lands Program Guide and creating the Environmental Lands Acquisition Panel.

The panel reviews and ranks nominated parcels and recommends purchases to the Board. Five members are appointees living in each commission district, and four at-large seats go to two natural resources professionals, one real estate or finance professional and one planning or engineering professional. It meets the third Tuesday of each month from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM in Conference Room B1-501 of County Administration Building B, 1800 27th Street, Vero Beach (Indian River County).

A county notice dated December 26, 2025 listed five nominated parcels with Board-approved sale agreements, two in Sebastian and three in the Vero Beach area, among the properties approved (county public notice). The notice scheduled panel field reviews of all five for January 6, 2026, at the Hale Groves parking lot on U.S. 1 in Sebastian.

The 13 GIS records with Sebastian addresses total 1,054.74 surveyed acres, under a tenth of the county sum, and the two North Sebastian Conservation Area records make up more than half of it.

The two North Sebastian records off Main Street and 80th Avenue carry 422.07 and 133.14 surveyed acres, the Sebastian Harbor Preserve on Englar Drive 162.43, and the Wabasso Scrub tract on 64th Avenue 133.10, according to the county GIS layer. Smaller Sebastian-address records include the Fischer Tract (94.12), Cypress Bend (47.63), Ansin Riverfront (31.75), the St Sebastian River Greenway (4.89) and the Sebastian Canoe Launch parcel (1.03). The 39.66-acre South Prong Preserve on 85th Street carries a Vero Beach address in the layer but a Sebastian address on the county roster.

Last verified: October 12, 2026, on the Indian River County Conservation Lands roster, the Environmental Lands Acquisition Panel page, the county GIS Conservation Lands layer, the county tract pages for Oslo Riverfront, Captain Forster Hammock, Hallstrom Farmstead, Jones' Pier and Lost Tree Islands, and the December 26, 2025 panel field-review notice.