THREAD: Nearly two decades into a sweeping rescue plan, doubts hover over efforts to reclaim Florida's Everglades. Read and watch WhatCanBeSaved:
FLAMINGO, Florida — Grabbing a clump of vegetation to steady herself, Tiffany Troxler gingerly slides her feet along the makeshift boardwalk as she ventures out into the marsh. The boards sag, dipping her up to her knees in the tea-colored water.
Formed roughly 5,000 years ago, during a time of sea level rise, the Everglades once comprised an area twice the size of New Jersey. What survives is not so much a natural ecosystem, but a remnant, heavily dependent on — and at the mercy of — a network of more than 2,100 miles of canals, 2,000 miles of levees and hundreds of floodgates, pump stations and other water-control structures.What Can Be Saved
And so when Florida became a state in 1845, one of the Legislature’s first acts was to pass a resolution asking Congress to survey the “wholly valueless” Everglades “with a view to their reclamation.” “Water that once ran wild. Water that ruined the rich terrain. Water that took lives and land. Put disaster in the headlines and death upon the soil. Now, it just waits there. Calm, peaceful. Ready to do the bidding of man and his machines.”
“We’re starting to see the vegetation respond, and we’re getting more of those marsh grasses, more of those open water sloughs,” says Stephen Davis, senior ecologist with the Everglades Foundation. “I’m very confident that we can restore this ecosystem. And by restoration, I mean enhancing the functionality of what remains.
“At this pace of restoration, it is even more imperative that agencies anticipate and design for the Everglades of the future,” they wrote.There are more than 360 species of birds, including the great blue heron and the diminutive green variety, purple gallinules and roseate spoonbills, the white ibis and the black skimmer. It is said to be the only place in the world where freshwater alligators and saltwater crocodiles co-exist.
Scientists suspect the python is responsible for the disappearance of up to 99 percent of the marsh rabbits, raccoons and other small mammals in the national park. “There’s a snake moving here,” Easterling replies. Diving into the undergrowth, Bartoszek does a double-take: “Hold on a second. … There might be two pythons!”After catching their breath, he and Easterling plunge their heads into the thicket, where the fat reptile is coiled up — and staring right at Easterling. “Hi!” he says. “Don’t strike out!”
In the past six years, the conservancy team has removed more than 500 pythons with a combined weight of about 13,000 pounds from a 50-mile-square area. Despite that success, Bartoszek thinks that total eradication of the Burmese python “is off the table.” “Overall, the Florida Everglades is struggling to survive in the face of sustained pressure from human activities and the increasing impacts of climate change,” the group wrote. “The poor to fair scores reflected in the report card indicate that the region’s ecosystems are degraded and the anticipated ecological benefits of restoration are still to be realized.”Some adaptation is taking place.
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