G.A.S.P.

I spent the next day (2-24) in Everglades National Park.  The first (and most important) thing that anyone needs to know about the Everglades is that it is a river, not a swamp.  It is a very wide and very slow moving river – about 50 miles wide and a few inches deep with a flow rate of maybe a half-mile per day.  It flows from Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida to the Gulf of Mexico at Florida Bay, and must have the right amount of water at the right time of year to support the very complex web of life that exists here. 

All went well for 8000 or so years (this land rose from the ocean just that long ago) until white man began to settle the area in the 1800s.  As with many other places I’ve visited, mankind managed to screw things up royally in just a short period of time.  The screw-up process began in the 1930s when the first roads and canals were built in the Everglades.  The resulting undesirable effects gave rise to a movement to “save the Everglades,” and in 1947 Everglades National Park was created for that purpose.  The problem, however, was that the National Park boundaries covered only one-fifth of the Everglades, and the health of the Park portion was totally dependent on what happened “upstream” of the Park lands.  The real “kicker” for the Everglades didn’t come until the 1960s when a series of levees and canals were built on the eastern edge of Everglades National Park to reduce the effects of flood and drought east of the Park (i.e., support land development).  That diminished the natural river (slough) flow, and wetland species suffered greatly.  There are now significantly fewer species and total wildlife than just a few decades ago.  For example, there has been a 93 per cent decline in the number of wading birds since the 1930s.  More recently, the number of Wood Storks, an endangered species, has declined from 6000 nesting birds to just 500 since the 1960s.  Even in Florida Bay, too little freshwater and too much fertilizer runoff has had a major impact, as its plants and animals have also begun to die.

Today, the Everglades is considered the nation’s most threatened National Park.  This “River of Grass,” as described by pioneering conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas in the 1940s, has already lost much of its grandeur and could just dry up and die.  But that won’t happen without a fight.  Not only is the fight underway, but it has taken on a global perspective.  It’s been said, and I think fairly so, that if mankind can save the Everglades, then there is hope for the Earth, and if not, then there is little hope to save our home planet.  On all the Earth, there is but one Everglades.  Maybe the battle cry to save it should be “Remember the Everglades!  Remember planet Earth!”

There has been recent progress in the effort to save the Everglades.  There is now an agreement to “guarantee” a certain flow of water through the Park, and a system of manmade levees and reservoirs has been developed to provide this water flow.  Congress has also expanded the National Park to protect the Eastern Shark River Slough – a place that historically had the highest concentrations of wading bird nesting populations in the Everglades.  Also, the National Park Service and the State of Florida are working together to enforce existing water quality regulations.  Even if totally successful, all of this effort does not mean that the Everglades will return to its former glory, as only a small portion of the historic Everglades lies within the boundaries of the National Park.  But something is better than nothing, and a partially restored Everglades is the best that we can now hope to leave for future generations.  Personally, I just hope that I can return in twenty years and see much more wildlife than I saw today.

There is another sad chapter in the story of Native Americans that involves the Everglades.  On January 12, 1853, President Andrew Jackson signed legislation stating “It shall be unlawful for any Indian or Indians to remain within the State of Florida, and any Indian or Indians…found within the limits of this State, shall be captured and sent west of the Mississippi River.”  Members of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes resisted the law and took refuge within the Everglades.  Today some are still here.  The Miccosukee in particular have their own constitution and form of government, and continue to practice many traditions of their ancestors.  They call their homeland, the Everglades, Kaahayatle.