## Facts

- Florida’s Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission had constitutional and statutory authority to manage wildlife, set closed seasons, and acquire lands for game management by purchase or gift.
- The Commission entered an agreement with certain landowners (not the plaintiffs) to create a 25-year “game management area” allowing public hunting on those owners’ lands.
- As part of that arrangement, the Commission ordered other lands—including approximately 700 acres owned by the plaintiff landowners—set aside as a breeding ground where neither the plaintiffs nor the public could hunt or trap.
- The Commission did not obtain the plaintiffs’ consent and did not pay compensation for the prohibition on hunting and trapping.
- The order incorporated the plaintiffs’ land into a refuge and barred hunting for an extended period, described in the record as indefinite and possibly 25 years.
- The plaintiffs sought declaratory and supplemental relief, alleging violations of due process, equal protection, and the prohibition on taking private property for public use without just compensation.

## Issues

1. Whether the Commission could designate privately owned land as a game refuge and prohibit all hunting there for a prolonged period without the owner’s consent or compensation.
2. Whether a prolonged, total ban on hunting on private land, imposed to serve wildlife-management objectives, constituted an unconstitutional taking or otherwise violated due process or equal protection.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s decree invalidating the Commission’s orders as applied to the plaintiffs’ land.
- The Court accepted that a landowner has a property interest, incident to ownership of the soil, in hunting on the land subject to lawful regulation.
- The Court held that the Commission’s action exceeded permissible regulation and operated as an unconstitutional invasion of property rights because it imposed a substantial, continuing restriction without consent or compensation.
- The order, which effectively appropriated the land’s use as a breeding ground to benefit broader public hunting and conservation goals, required compensation if imposed.

## Legal Principles

- Although the state has broad authority to regulate wildlife and the taking of game for conservation, that authority is not unlimited when exercised against private property interests.
- A landowner’s ability to hunt on their own land, within lawful regulatory limits, may constitute a protectable property right incident to land ownership.
- Regulatory action can cross the constitutional line into a taking when it imposes a comprehensive, prolonged prohibition that effectively appropriates a private property use for public purposes.
- An agency may not impose a substantial, long-term burden on private land for public wildlife-management objectives without statutory authority to acquire the interest and without paying just compensation.

## Conclusion

The court held that the Commission could not, by administrative order and without compensation, convert private land into a long-term no-hunting refuge to serve public wildlife-management objectives; doing so exceeded permissible regulation and violated constitutional protections for private property.


Alford v. Finch, 155 So. 2d 790 (Fla. 1963)