Allie Preston, Author at Friends of the Everglades

On Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ birthday, your support empowers our resilience

Today is Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ birthday, and we find ourselves contemplating the pursuits she championed as we try to see the challenges of today through our founder’s eyes. No doubt there’s been progress, but amid the salient victories, Florida’s wild spaces remain under grave attack. The Florida’s Legislature too often works to undercut environmental protections. Glades community residents deserve real protection from the environmental injustice of sugarcane burning. We still face an uphill battle against greed, corruption and bad politics more than two decades after Marjory’s death. If Marjory were around today, we think she’d be furious. We are also absolutely certain that despite this, she wouldn’t give up. In fact, it was part of her legacy to draw from [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-06T11:02:22-04:00April 7th, 2022|All Posts, Marjory Stoneman Douglas|

Interview with Everglades Activist Maggy Hurchalla

Maggy Hurchalla was an Everglades activist who worked with Friends of the Everglades for many years, even working directly with our founder Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She was a wealth of freely-shared information and a fierce advocate of Florida's environment. She was a spirited adventurer and an accomplished kayaker that could put paddlers half her age to shame. And she was one of the greatest storytellers we've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Maggy passed away on February 19, 2022, leaving a tremendous hole in the heart of Florida's environmental community who looked to her as a leader of conservation advocacy until her final days. She is greatly missed by many, and we carry on the work to protect Florida's wild [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-07T12:22:07-04:00April 6th, 2022|All Posts, Everglades Restoration|

ASR wells are still the subject of vast scientific uncertainty

Photo credit: South Florida Water Management District Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) refers to the process of recharge, storage, and recovery of water in an aquifer. ASR is the central component of the Lake Okeechobee Watershed Restoration Project (LOWRP) as presented in the draft PIR, accounting for roughly 85% of the costs. ASR has long been the subject of considerable scientific uncertainty. Questions surrounding its feasible use in Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) projects date back to an evaluation by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 which identified five areas of major uncertainty that needed to be addressed before it was clear that ASR would be viable on a regional scale in CERP: 1) operations to protect [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-07T12:21:45-04:00April 5th, 2022|All Posts, Everglades Restoration, U.S. Congress|

Your moment of Everglades zen: A rare encounter

Spotted in the Everglades: A critically endangered smalltooth sawfish A friend of the Everglades recently took a boat trip from Flamingo to the Shark River basin where he shared a chance encounter with an extremely special Everglades species. In the video below, you'll see the protruding double dorsal fins and tail of a smalltooth sawfish as it patrols the shallow shoreline of Shark River. The species gets it name from its most distinct feature, detailed in the drawing above — a long, flat snout lined with teeth that looks like a saw and is known as a rostrum. These saws are extremely sensitive to currents given off by [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-12T09:50:59-04:00April 5th, 2022|All Posts, Everglades Zen, Wildlife Habitat|

Veto request caps 2022 Legislative Session

The Florida Legislature has ended its 2022 session. But we’re not done yet. One of the worst bills to emerge from Tallahassee this year was approved by the Legislature but has not yet been signed into law by Gov. DeSantis. Senate Bill 2508 was a toxic stew of bad ideas that sought to undermine responsible water management on Lake Okeechobee, fast-track wetlands destruction and expand the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program to rival, and perhaps compete with, Florida’s signature environmental land-acquisition program, Florida Forever. Introduced surreptitiously as a “budget conforming bill,” SB 2508 had only one legislative hearing — but generated such a massive wave of opposition that legislators amended it, then further altered it during budget negotiations, stripping [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-13T16:10:06-04:00March 31st, 2022|All Posts, Florida Legislature, SB 2508|

Calls for DeSantis to Veto SB 2508 Strengthen

Friends of the Everglades has joined Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, and Calusa Waterkeeper in sending a letter to Gov. DeSantis strongly urging him to veto SB 2508. DeSantis previously blasted the nefarious nature of this bill and the way it was introduced for "short circuiting public engagement and leaving affected agencies in the dark." Though amended to remove some of the most harmful provisions, SB 2508 still poses risks to Florida’s fragile environment and threatens to undermine years of work to develop the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual (LOSOM) that could help relieve communities from toxic discharges and harmful algae blooms. Moreover, provisions that would allow the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program to [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-13T16:10:16-04:00March 30th, 2022|Action Alerts, All Posts, Friends of the Everglades Statements, SB 2508|

VIDEO: Protecting two national parks requires making the right call in Homestead

Our longtime board member Alan Farago summed it up earlier today: "We’re in a fight to protect and preserve what we have and not to just let the goal posts change whenever it's politically convenient." During today's Clean Water Conversation, we tackled development pressure in Homestead — an area that is uniquely situated between Biscayne National Park and Everglades National Park and includes some of the last remaining expanses of green space in Miami-Dade County. This pressure is not new. Two decades ago, Friends of the Everglades strongly opposed expanded aviation at the Homestead Air Reserve Base, leading to an eventual rejection of commercial aviation by the Air Force. Now, we're working to combat new plans for more air traffic [...]

Allie Preston2022-03-30T15:45:43-04:00March 30th, 2022|Clean Water Conversations, Homestead Air Reserve Base|

DeSantis Should Veto SB 2508

Allie Preston2022-04-13T16:10:26-04:00March 28th, 2022|Action Alerts, All Posts, Florida Legislature, LOSOM, SB 2508|

Everglades in the News: Maggy Hurchalla special edition

It’s hard to imagine that it’s already been a month since the passing of our friend, mentor, and environmental hero, Maggy Hurchalla. As a staff, this loss has felt particularly close to heart for many reasons, not least of which is our compassion for her granddaughter Kym who serves as our Development Coordinator. Maggy was a frequent participant in Friends of the Everglades activities. She sat on our Science and Policy Committee, offering insight and advice to all manner of environmental issues that helped us deepen our understanding of the fights facing Florida’s natural spaces. She was a repeat special guest during our annual Stories from the Sawgrass event, delighting viewers with poetry recitations and first-hand accounts of wild adventures [...]

Allie Preston2022-03-28T16:06:57-04:00March 22nd, 2022|All Posts, Friends of the Everglades Statements|

Your opposition helped fend off the worst of SB 2508

We wounded the beast. But Senate Bill 2508 is still an ugly monster of a bill. And now it’s headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk. On Thursday, March 10, the Florida Senate and House resolved a budget impasse triggered in part by the controversial SB 2508, agreeing to slight revisions in the bill language. The changes are a marginal improvement over the previous version, and they do little to redeem this sneak-attack legislation — which Senate leaders rammed through the Legislature with little public input. The bill still poses risks to Florida’s fragile environment. The original bill — which was proposed in early February and had but one legislative hearing — was a hodgepodge of bad ideas that would have [...]

Allie Preston2022-04-13T16:10:40-04:00March 11th, 2022|Florida Legislature, SB 2508|

About Allie Preston