After a devastating hurricane and chronic flooding issues, the US Government, along with the State of Florida, embarked on a project which would change the face of the Everglades forever.
This is the story of how the Everglades were drained.
An ecosystem which once spread from Central Florida to Florida Bay was reduced to what is now Everglades National Park. An area that was crucial for filtering pollutants and providing habitat, and as a source of freshwater, became a series of agricultural fields and reservoirs.
Even Everglades National Park wasn’t spared. Because, the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, and the water that moved through it, was highly interconnected. Draining the upper Everglades had catastrophic consequences for the ecology of the lower Everglades because it severed a thousand-year-old hydrological connection.
Efforts have been made since to restore the unique hydrology of this area, including one of the largest ecological restoration efforts in US History, but the Everglades have seen irreparable damage.
The draining of the Everglades is a lesson in the interconnectedness of ecological systems, and how these systems rarely fit within the political boundaries we set for them. Human disturbances often have impacts far beyond their immediate areas, and the more we learn about these impacts, the more we can begin to stop them from happening in the first place.
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