Everglades Conservation Victory a Hopeful Sign of What’s to Come

I remember when South Florida was more than a pastel jumble of overgrown suburban homes, Walgreens drugstores, strip malls and unnatural landscaping. When I was a child growing up along the eastern coast about midway between West Palm Beach and Miami, everything west of our neighborhood was made up of small independent farms, swamp and miles of untouched pine forests. My friends and I had a fort overlooking an alligator-infested canal, and you could still hear the cacophony of subtropical nature every night. This wasn’t 40 years ago – I’m only 26. But in that time, so much has changed.

The Everglades have been increasingly encroached upon in the last couple of decades, between the sugar industry and luxury developments built right on top of filled-in swampland. Along the edges, people have lost the natural fear and respect for animals like the alligator and cottonmouth snake, and have interfered with the natural ecosystem by dumping unwanted pets like lizards, snakes and fish into the water. The area I lived in is virtually unrecognizable, it’s so overly developed. Traffic sounds, loud music and construction drown out the sounds of nature. It’s a mess – and for a while there, it seemed like there were few people that actually cared.

The recent sale of 300 square miles of the Everglades to the state of Florida by U.S. Sugar Corp. has been trumpeted as ‘one of the biggest conservation deals in U.S. history’, and it is, indeed, a massive victory for environmentalists. Here are some details from The Huffington Post:

The deal with U.S. Sugar Corp. results from a convergence of interests: The state is trying to restore the Everglades and clean up pollution caused by Big Sugar and other growers, while the American sugar industry is being squeezed by low-price imports.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist declared the agreement “as monumental as the creation of our nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.”

Under the deal, the state would buy U.S. Sugar’s holdings in the Everglades south of Lake Okeechobee, including its cane fields, mill and railroad line. U.S. Sugar would be allowed to farm the 187,000 acres for six more years, after which it would go out of business.

The state would then protect the land from development, which has been encroaching on the Everglades for decades.

The state of Florida will also work on restoring the area to its natural state, undoing years of damage caused by the re-routing or damming of the natural flow of water to allow for houses and farms. This will be a large step forward in stopping the constant flow of fertilizer from farms that currently leaks into the Everglades.

The victory against U.S. Sugar Corp. is happy news for anyone concerned about the preservation of America’s natural beauty, and especially for supporters of Everglades preservation. It could be a catalyst to change prevailing views regarding ‘progress’ in an area that was once a sleepy, muggy, buggy but incredibly beautiful example of the wonders of nature. The concept of stepping lightly on the earth is one that is slowly starting to sink in across the world, and it brings with it the hope that we do still have a chance to stop the destruction of the planet before it’s totally out of our control.

The South Florida that I love has nothing to do with the horrendous traffic, endless stream of relocating retirees, cookie-cutter houses and pollution-filled waterways. It’s in the hum of the cicadas, the gnarled roots of the mangrove trees that grow in the waters along the coast, the pine boughs swaying in the breeze and the mysterious life force that can be sensed at twilight on the edge of a marsh. Though I know the massive crowds and endless march of civilization will likely always be a part of South Florida, I hope that one day when I go back to visit, the natural beauty of the land will have regained its prominence with the help of the conservationists who work so hard to protect it.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user Stig Nygaard

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