Chinsegut Conservation Center

History:

Chinsegut Conservation Center covers 408 of the 850 acres comprising Chinsegut Wildlife and Environmental Area (WEA). The area is managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and funded by the Pittman-Robertson Program and state legislative appropriations. The Conservation center is the only educational facility operated by the Commission's Office of Public Access and Wildlife Viewing.

Chinsegut buildingChinsegut was owned in the early 1900s by Col. Raymond Robins, whose colorful career included gold mining in Alaska and serving as an economic advisor to five presidents. Robins named his land "Chinsegut," an Alaskan Inuit Indian word for the "spirit of lost things." Robins used a looser translation: "The place where things of true value that have been lost may be found again."

Robins donated his property to the federal government in 1932 to be used as a wildlife refuge. In 1973 the Commission acquired Chinsegut Conservation Center. Chinsegut WEA grew in 1989, when the Commission acquired an additional 420 acres, known as the Big Pine Tract and reached its current size in 2008 when the Commission acquired an additional 30 acres from The Nature Conservancy.