The Everglades Bioregion & its Threats

A bioregion is ¨an area of land which shares similar environmental, physical, climatic conditions and contain characteristic ecosystmes of plants and animals¨ (Goulthorpe & Gilfedder 2002)

The Everglades bioregion is the watershed of South Florida, where a tropic and sub-tropic climate blend, originally starting in the Orlando area´s chain of lakes following the Kissimmee River basin into Lake Okeechobee and leaking out towards the coasts, creating marshes, sloughs (including Pahayokee, the Shark Valley´s famous river of grass), hammock islands and rivers loaded with wildlife. South Florida was inhabited by land-based cultures known to us as: Calusa, Jeaga, Tekesta, Jobe, Ais and others. As Muscogee people from the Creek Confederation were forced to migrate south, the culture came to be known as Seminole and were soon joined by escaped African slaves (known as Estelusti). During the Wars of Indian Removal, the Everglades was one of the final holdouts of indigenous resistance to the encroaching U.S. Empire and its ongoing holocaust against native cultures. This bioregion is still home to the lands of Seminole and Miccosukee Tribal reservations, as well as lands held by the Independent Traditional Seminole Nation, which comprise some of the last unceded native territories in the Eastern United States. There were never legitimate treaties with the U.S. government south of Lake Kissimmee; according to agreements made with General Worth and signed by President Polk in 1845, Florida´s southern-most 5 million acres was set aside for the remaining Seminoles in Florida.

Today South Florida’s environment is a strange dichotomy. It is simultaneously home to one of the country’s largest expanse of protected wild area and one of the most degraded, threatened ecosystems in the U.S. Over the past century, countless reports, books and articles have been written about the demise of the Everglades. The last few decades filled shelves and files with stories and studies on the costly and overly-complx attempts to resuscitate the vast wetlands. With near $10 billion public dollars (and rising) earmarked for restoration, what is considered the most ambitious restoration project on the planet has become a cash cow of corruption tainting nearly every agency and organization its money touches. There is an industry of advocacy groups and foundations that are dependent on the business interests and crooked politics of Everglades restoration--what we call the Environmental-Industrial Complex. If the Everglades had as many people defending it as it has researching and debating its defense, perhaps you wouldn’t have to bother reading this today.

While scientists and engineers spell out the hydrological failures of quality and quantity to sustain the ecosystem, the developer’s bulldozer keeps on rolling, building towering coastal condos, aquifer-sucking sprawl and the all the polluting roads and power plants needed to support this cancer-like urban growth. As Big Agri-Business works their political connections to re-zone land for their final crop of concrete-and-steel across the EAA, the question of whether we can restore the historic flows of the Everglades region becomes moot. Add in the projections for coming climate change if we don't reduce greenhouse gases immediately and the Everglades ecosystem, and all the plants and animals that depend on it (including us), are done for. From this point on we draw a line in the beach sand and swamp muck and say: No More.