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MARCO EAGLE

The Everglades: Past is known; future up in the air and down in the water

Lance Shearer
Correspondent

Part one of three

The words “vast and silent” go with the Everglades, almost like an official title. When people talk about the Everglades National Park, or the entirety of the swampy, low-lying geographical area in South Florida – and they are distinct, not exactly interchangeable – the phrase “vast and silent” is a recurring motif.

It goes along with the other nickname, “River of Grass,” which was forever attached to the Everglades by Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ 1947 book of the same name.

On Marco Island, the Everglades are a constant presence, just off in the middle distance. They ensure that the enormous tracts of land to the east can never be developed, but will remain wild, and keep Marco as something of an outpost or jumping off point for civilization at the edge of the wilderness.

American Alligator, Alligator mississipiensis, Split over and under water shot, Florida Everglades

The Everglades are the River of Grass because of sheet flow coming from Lake Okeechobee, draining the torrential summer rains in the southern tip of the Florida peninsula with a seasonal flow said to be “a hundred miles wide and an inch deep.” For centuries, this slow, natural movement of water proceeded unimpeded, ever since the land rose above the receding seas during the last Ice Age, transitioning from a shallow sea to a low-lying swamp teeming with wildlife.

Native Americans lived off the abundance of fish and game, and were joined by runaway slaves, deserters from the Civil War, and scofflaws such as the notorious Edwin Watson, who wanted to go beyond the reach of governmental authorities in what became known as America’s last frontier just over 100 years ago.

Long after other Indian nations east of the Mississippi had been subdued or relocated, the Seminoles held out, using their knowledge of the area and ability to live off the land to frustrate the United States Army units tasked with defeating them. Fort Myers, which for decades was the last American outpost on Florida’s west coast, was established as a base from which to prosecute the Seminole Wars.

The Seminole Wars saw massive imbalance of forces, with up to 55,000 Army troops, unencumbered by homes or families, fighting only approximately 2,000 Seminoles – when they could find them – and sometimes being found by them. As a rule, the Seminole warriors did not attempt to engage the U.S. Army in pitched battles, the government forces were never able to defeat or round up the Native Americans, who simply melted away into the scrub and swamps of the back country. The Seminoles, and particularly the Miccosukee branch who still have native villages within eight miles of Marco Island, were never conquered. The government forces’ experience in hunting them added to the perception of the Everglades as a worthless, pestilential fever swamp.

But the encroachment of the broader American culture continued to encircle and then abruptly changed the Everglades forever, with the construction of the Tamiami Trail sending U.S. Highway 41 across what had been trackless swamp in 1926. In essence, the roadbed that was built up above the waterline became a massive, nearly 100-mile dam blocking the River of Grass, largely cutting off the sheet flow.  At that time, the Everglades was believed to be worthless in its wild state, and “draining the swamp” was seen as an unalloyed civic benefit.

Natural conditions in the Everglades include mud. Over 150 runners raced through the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve in the second annual Everglades Ultra challenge, running up to 50 miles.
Joel Greiff, left, goes on a swamp walk with his family at Clyde Butcher's Big Cypress Gallery, in the heart of the Everglades.

We are still grappling as a society with the fallout of the decisions made in our grandparents’ time. The current environmental and political issue concerning runoff from Lake Okeechobbee traces back to the successful efforts to block the natural flow of water through the Everglades, and the fertilizer and pollution carried by the runoff from the enormous, and subsidized, sugarcane plantations and other agricultural operations around the lake.

An osprey settles back down on its nest, with chicks in residence, near Fakahatchee Island, home of early settlers to the area.

Sometimes, the problem is too much water, and other times, not enough, as the millions of new residences that have sprung up in South Florida demand fresh water for drinking, swimming pools and lawn irrigation. All of this takes place against a backdrop of global climate change, which already sees flooding in Miami every time there is an abnormally high tide, and will cause profound changes in the sawgrass marshes and mangrove swamps of the Everglades, lying just a few feet or even inches above the current sea level.

A major milestone in area history took place in 1947, when Everglades National Park was designated, helping promulgate the idea that the “vast and silent” wilderness had value in its natural state. Just the next year, though, Congress authorized the Central and South Florida Project, involving construction of an elaborate system of roads, canals, levees, and water-control structures throughout South Florida to provide flood protection and water for the use of urban and agricultural lands. The stated goals also included preservation of fish and wildlife habitat, but the alteration of regional wetlands, estuaries and bays “has significantly degraded the natural system,” according to the National Park Service.

Efforts to undo human damage to the ’Glades include the Save Our Everglades program announced by then-Governor Bob Graham in 1983, and the ongoing CERP, or Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, that passed Congress by an overwhelming margin and was signed into law by Pres. Bill Clinton in December, 2000. At the time, CERP was estimated to cost $8.2 billion and take 30 years to complete. More recent study indicates a cost over $10 billion, and a 50-year window for completion, although what will be happening in the area by the year 2050 is difficult or impossible to know.

Still to come

  • Patchwork of agencies and jurisdictions regulate activity in the Everglades
  • How to have your own Everglades experience