KEY POINTS:
The Everglades of southern Florida, under siege from development and farming for more than a century, have been offered a new lease on life with a plan to restore large areas to a natural, swampy state.
Some 75,675ha of sugar plantation will be gradually returned to nature under the plan. The hope of environmentalists is that the slow-moving "river of grass" will flow north to south once again, restoring a delicate ecosystem that supplies fresh water to the aquifers of southern Florida.
Yesterday's deal was described as "an unprecedented opportunity to completely rewrite the course of Everglades", by Jeff Danter of the Nature Conservancy. The long-planned restoration effort is the largest of its kind in the world, an attempt to undo and reroute decades of flood-control projects that have diverted water to make way for growth.
Until yesterday, the prohibitive cost meant the plan was moribund. According to the author Michael Grunwald, half of the original Everglades has been lost, and the rest polluted and no longer flowing naturally.
Just 100 years ago, southern Florida was America's last frontier, a watery wilderness of slow-moving, shallow rivers. It had the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere and was home to panthers, alligators and manatees.
Then came Napoleon Bonaparte Broward who hatched a plan to drain the Everglades. He was so successful that a real estate boom soon turned much of the sub-tropical wilderness into a long vista of strip malls with seven million residents. What the estate agents could not sell was turned into sugar plantations, irrigated by pumps which sucked fresh water away from cities such as Miami.
The plan, announced yesterday by Governor Charlie Crist, may be the most optimistic environmental act by a United States political leader in generations. The plan is to spend US$1.75 billion ($2.3 billion) buying out farmland blamed for the decline of the Everglades from the US Sugar Corporation.
Crist, who calls himself the "Everglades governor", has hopes of being named Republican John McCain's running mate for the presidential election.
Praise for Crist's initiative was almost universal. "It's mind-blowing," said Kirk Fordham, of the Everglades Foundation.
Florida is famous for its sunshine, but the southern part of the state is among the rainiest places in North America. All that rain used to end up in Lake Okeechobee and ran into the Everglades, a 160km-long, shallow river flowing through serrated sawgrass from the lake to Florida Bay, between the southern tip of the state and the Florida Keys.
The wetlands remained waterlogged all year, creating underground aquifers which supply drinking water to Florida's cities. For many Floridians, their protection and restoration is of the highest priority.
They are just as worried about farm effluent that pollutes drinking water as they are about plans to start drilling for oil off the Florida coast. Crist and McCain have both said it is time to start drilling and yesterday's Everglades announcement may be designed to remove some of the sting for environmentalists.
AT HOME IN THE WETLANDS
Florida panther: These are a primarily solitary species and, with a top speed of 55 km/h, they are formidable hunters. In the 1980s, their population was thought to be below 50.
Wood stork: These birds feed by waiting for fish to swim into their bills, before snapping them shut. Their population in America dropped from 20,000 pairs in the 1930s to 5000 in the late 1970s, attributed to the loss of their wetland habitat.
West Indian manatee: Known as sea cows, these endangered marine creatures can grow up to 4m long. An estimated 1865 live in Florida with many dying in collisions with boats.
Burmese python: In 2005, 95 pythons were captured after they had been dumped by owners taken by surprise when cute baby snakes bought as pets needed more food than themselves once grown. The snakes fed on small animals of the Everglades.
- INDEPENDENT
