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. “This is the treacherous part,” the Florida International University researcher says. To a layman, this patch of brown-green saw grass and button
1 / 35What Can Be Saved EvergladesIn this Friday, Oct. 25, 2019, photo, sugar cane is harvested, attracting cattle egrets in search of insects, near South Bay, Fla. Much the original Everglades wetlands have been drained to create agricultural land, depriving the ecosystem of its natural water flow. 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.
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.
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." The Corps’ primary mandate was to protect people, not the environment. As the narrator put it in the 1950s documentary “Waters of Destiny,” the agency saw itself as victorious in a war against nature:
Perhaps the biggest step toward that end so far is the re-engineering of Tamiami Trail, the east-west highway that essentially has acted as a dike through the heart of the Everglades since the 1920s. Since 2013, workers have elevated 3.3 miles of the roadway, allowing water to flow freely into Shark River Slough, historically the deepest and wettest part of the Everglades.
Scientists are counting on mangroves and other more salt-tolerant plants to migrate inland into the saw grass plains, establishing a new, natural bulwark against climate change. But that change may already be outpacing nature’s — and man’s — ability to counter it: When the restoration plan was adopted in 2000, its authors were anticipating seas to rise only 6 inches by 2050. They’ve since already risen 5 inches.
Of all the invasive species plaguing the Everglades, the Burmese python is the most high-profile and, arguably, the most intractable. No one is quite sure how a giant snake native to Southeast Asia found its way into the wilds of South Florida in the late 1970s, although many believe the first were escaped — or released — pets. Estimates of their population run into the hundreds of thousands, and they are voracious.
Every two weeks, he flies over the area, picking up the unique signal of radio transmitters surgically implanted into 25 snakes and plugging their coordinates into a spreadsheet. The hope is that these so-called “Judas snakes” will lead them to others, especially breeding-age females. "Here comes the pretzel move,” he shouts as the giant reptile writhes, flopping against his thigh with a thud. With a deep groan, she lets go the contents of her digestive tract.Back in the lab, they weigh and measure their prize: nearly 14 feet long and just over 95 pounds.
“Everglades restoration has always been an ambitious and complex endeavor,” the National Academies of Sciences panel wrote. “Our current review emphasizes how it is also dynamic and the importance of focusing restoration on the future Everglades, rather than on the past Everglades.” Thomas Van Lent, vice president of science and education at the Everglades Foundation, recently took a pontoon boat trip on a 2-mile section of the restored river.His colleague Stephen Davis believes the plan can provide flood protection — and water for drinking and recreation — while restoring and preserving the Everglades’ original functions.
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