A plan to build golf courses, pickleball courts and hotels in some of Florida’s popular state parks, which became public late last month when a state employee decided to leak it, has set off extraordinary backlash against the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The plan, shared with The Tampa Bay Times through intermediaries, prompted a series of grass-roots protests across the state as Floridians demanded that the parks be kept intact. Republican leaders from Washington to the state capital, Tallahassee, including some of the governor’s stalwart allies, were among those questioning the plan, calling it an affront to long-held bipartisan conservation efforts in Florida.

James Gaddis, a cartographer for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection who leaked the plan, said in an interview that he had been asked to draw up conceptual land use maps that would have destroyed environmentally sensitive lands and imperiled plant and animal species.

The DeSantis administration initially defended the plan, which it called the “Great Outdoors Initiative,” as a way “to expand public access, increase outdoor activities and provide new lodging options across Florida’s state parks.” It announced a vague version of the plan on Aug. 19 — a day before a story with more details, based on the leak, appeared in The Tampa Bay Times.

But, faced with an unrelenting wave of opposition, Mr. DeSantis shelved it last week, a rare policy setback for a governor used to getting his way. It was the kind of bruising moment that some in Tallahassee think Mr. DeSantis could face more often after his failed campaign for the Republican presidential nomination left him politically weakened.

“They’re going back to the drawing board,” Mr. DeSantis said at a public event on Aug. 28, adding that the plan was “half-baked and not ready for prime time.”