By the mid-1960s, when the federal government was becoming increasingly involved in initiatives designed to protect the country's environmental interests, Florida had four agencies involved with environmental protection: the Florida Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund (state land, including shores, beaches, wetlands, and bodies of water), the Department of Health (sewage treatment, drinking water quality), Florida Department of Natural Resources (state parks and recreation areas), and Game and Freshwater Fish Commission (hunting and fishing).

[1] In the late 1960s, the Florida Department of Air and Water Pollution Control was created under Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr.

This revised agency was entrusted with the quality of the state's air and water, and with making major land management decisions, primarily related to shorelines and wetlands.

[citation needed] In 2011, DEP suspended its wetlands director "after she refused to approve a permit to a failed effort to sell off surplus park land" and Everglades scientists.

The headquarters occupied the fifth floor of the DEP main offices in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas building in Tallahassee, Florida.

Although dedicated primarily to the protection and conservation of state lands, parks, properties and bodies of water, officers took law enforcement action statewide.

[citation needed] As part of the Great Outdoors Initiative program, FDEP in August 2024 proposed several changes impacting nine state parks: Anastasia, Camp Helen, Dr.

[6] However, these plans generated significant controversy due to their potential environmental impacts, including opposition from U.S. senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott;[7] congressional representatives Kathy Castor, Matt Gaetz, Brian Mast, and Darren Soto; Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo; and many local officials.

[4]: 7  After a meeting in 2002, the FDEP and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission formed a team of interagency marine resource professionals of all levels of US government, of scientists and other stakeholders.