Ecotourism in Florida - Without a Paddle (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine August 2003

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The Water Issue: Restoration Dreams
Without a Paddle (Cont.)

GOING BACK ISN'T AS HARD, physically. We trudge and pull and swim in silence. It crosses my mind how fast we've adapted to our surroundings. I'm not glancing around for the next cottonmouth or even the clamping jaws of an irate alligator.

It takes two days of poling before we reach dry land. The periphyton is so thick I start using it as a sponge. At first I don't get it. Why is it so healthy here? Then it dawns on me: Much of Everglades National Park remains healthy because it no longer receives its historical water supply. Thanks to the canals and levees farther north, most of the polluted runoff from the sugarcane farms, cattle ranches, and citrus orchards is dumped in the ocean, fouling Florida Bay and the coastal conservation areas but sparing the lower Everglades. It's a classic, if upsetting, paradox. Whenever the SFWMD has seen fit to unleash a man-made flood, the effect has been devastating; the nutrient-rich freshwater flushes through Shark River Slough, messing with the fragile pH balance and, ultimately, contributing to algal blooms in Florida Bay that have killed off pink shrimp and sponges and driven away pompano, redfish, and sea trout. Left alone, the park seems to be getting by—as long as South Florida receives its average 60 inches of rain. Even if the Corps doesn't restore the Everglades, the lower section will probably survive; it'll just be a bit drier than it was 100 years ago.

This isn't good enough for Steve. "Some scientists believe the lower Everglades always had a dry period," he says as we approach the park road, near a spot called Ficus Pond, where we'll pull out—crestfallen, covered in muck, but still essentially in control of our faculties. "But a dry-out only allows for small fish. We know that there were big fish here. I think water was here year-round except in the driest of years."

Well, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that no one agrees on anything in the Everglades. That's not a big surprise at this point. And it doesn't really matter. The old Everglades is gone forever. Yes, the park will always be here, standing tough like some old-growth forest surrounded by the latest gated community. Inside its mangrove walls, a bit of the past will live on. But the Frankenstein's-monster version—with its ASRs, massive pumps, and miles of readjusted canals—will be waiting in the shadows.

Is that such a bad thing? It's the future, after all, a 21st-century recreationist's dream—a stop-and-shop subtropical car-camping paradise, with plenty of put-ins, concrete boat ramps, and septic-tank disposal areas. Once CERP is implemented, we will all be able to feel like we're part of the natural world, in a Disney kind of way. On your left, you'll find man-made hammocks with reintroduced deer nestled beside concrete-lined swamps housing fattened alligators. On your right, a genetically altered Florida panther will lurk behind greenhouse-raised saw grass, waiting for one of you lucky tourists to fall overboard. It'll be fun!

Yep, no matter what, this is the New Everglades. And despite what we like to tell ourselves, despite what we may wish for, no one—not the panthers, not the coral, not the periphyton, not even Steve Robinson—can ever go home again.

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