Learning to love Everglades up close Our guide, “Wild Lyle” Thomas, killed the fan on his airboat and climbed down to the bow. “This is a place where we used to see 40 or 50 snail kites,” the five-decade veteran of the Everglades told us. On a recent March morning, we counted ourselves as lucky to catch a distant view of one of the endangered birds. But we saw plenty evidence of the damage wreaked on the former River of Grass. It explained why the birds of prey weren’t there. “Cattails and willows. Phosphorous and nitrogen,” said Maggy Hurchalla, shaking her head. The former Martin County commissioner has spent more than a generation fighting the kind of development that drained the lifeblood from the Everglades. Yet there we were, looking at how far we still had to go. I joined Hurchalla and another environmental statesman, Nathaniel Reed, as they led a group of Jensen Beach High School students and their environmental studies teacher, Crystal Lucas, into the ecosystem the students have studied in their classroom. It’s one thing to read about the multibilliondollar plans to restore the Everglades; to understand the parched ecosystem needs more cleaned water See SAMPLES, 17A COLUMNIST EVE SAMPLES Article Continued Below See SAMPLES on Page A17 SAMPLES from 1A from Lake Okeechobee. Its entirely different to witness what it is supposed to look like - as we did during the latter part of our journey. Our group got lucky. The water levels were high enough to let us cross a dense wall of cattails into the interior marshes of Water Conservation Area 2, a 210-squaremile area that straddles western Broward and Palm Beach counties. On the other side of the cattails, we entered a slough filled with white water lilies and surrounded by native saw grass. We saw a blue heron rookery with at least 10 nests. We saw slimy logs of periphyton, communities of floating algae that are indicators of water quality in the Everglades. The scene was more enlightening than anything we could study in a book. Its such a complex ecosystem for a place that looks like it just isnt anything, Lucas said. She reminded her students the Everglades is dependent on fluctuations in water levels. Thats part of the reason its so challenging to engineer a fix that would reconnect Lake O to the Everglades. If you make it very wet all the time, youll kill it, Hurchalla confirmed. If you make it the same level all the time, youll kill it. If you make it very dry all the time, youll kill it. Still, Hurchalla believes we can (and should) find a way to move more water south from Lake Okeechobee - sparing the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries from devastating discharges like the ones we saw last year. Sending the water south is good for the Everglades, Hurchalla said. You just have to clean it first. Hurchalla, who sat next to me on the boat, threw an elbow in my direction as we motored back into the thicket of cattails on our return trip. Then she gestured to the east, where Spanish tile rooftops were visible on the perimeter of the Everglades to the north. She threw up her hands in exasperation and laughed. Despite all weve learned about what has devastated the Everglades - overdevelopment, overengineering and overfertilizing, to name the biggies - these bad habits persist. As we headed back to Thomas base camp, our boat chased three black-necked stilts playfully flying ahead of us. I hope youll remember what the Everglades looked like forever, Reed, former assistant secretary of the Interior and current vice chair of the Everglades Foundation, told the students. Nat and I are depending on you to save us, Hurchalla chimed in. Yes, were getting old! said Reed, who is 80, laughing. Then we all got back into our cars, drove past a new housing development being built on Loxahatchee Road and returned to our suburban lives. But the next time we think about the crisis in the Everglades, we will remember what we witnessed in that pocket of the interior marshes. We will remember what it can be again. Eve Samples is a columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. This column reflects her opinion. Contact her at 772-221-4217 or eve.samples@scripps.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 10:39:51 +0000
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