The life of a Florida drone bill in the context of perceived ecological and cultural crises

Keywords: Biosecurity, white supremacy, drones, conservation, Florida, political ecology
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

In 2020, Florida approved an amendment that granted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) the right to use drones for invasive species eradication. A stipulation at the time was that drones could not be used by FWC law enforcement. Six months later, on the heels of Black Lives Matter protests, the same drone law was further amended to grant enforcement agencies the right to use drones for crowd control. In 2022, the law was amended again, this time removing the language that barred FWC enforcement officers from drone use. During this amendment process House Representative Anthony Sabatini argued for an additional amendment to a separate yet related Statute (The Endangered and Threatened Species Act), adding that “freedom, individual liberty, and personal responsibility are also considered endangered species in this state”. Sabatini's definitional change to the state constitution did not pass.

This paper follows a single law – Florida’s 2015 Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act – over its eight year lifespan. It contextualizes its passage and amendments within the regional and national political economy of 2010-2022. In doing so, it interrogates how and why a bill on approved forms of state drone use has served as a collection point for a range of fears and a generalized desire to police anything that is a threat to reproducing Florida’s landscapes of white male hegemony. It highlights an increasingly convoluted mix of political ecological anxieties shared by Florida’s contemporary power-bloc and the move to trendy biosecurity technologies to resolve them.