Friends of the Everglades Executive Director Eve Samples weighs in on how the DOGE cuts to national parks staff is anything but efficient in this month’s Voice of the Everglades update:
The national parks and refuges of the Greater Everglades are spectacular and unique places — each bounded by water and offering respite from the mushrooming metropolis that has subsumed so much of Florida.
Wise people who came before us — Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Ernest Coe, Nathaniel Reed among them — had the foresight to protect these swaths of wilderness because they recognized an investment in our collective future.
Now these very places are under assault.
Federal cuts over the past month have led to the elimination of about 30 jobs at Everglades National Park, Biscayne National Park; Dry Tortugas National Park; and the Loxahatchee and Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuges.
We lost rangers, educators, scientists and other public servants who have devoted their careers to conservation of our water, wildlife and wilderness. Some were fired because they were in their current position for less than a year, others felt pressured to take “deferred resignations” because they anticipate future layoffs.
These DOGE-driven cuts have been executed in the name of “government efficiency” — but the great irony is they will have the exact opposite effect. They will undermine our massive government investment in Everglades restoration.
The science center at Everglades National Park has been among the hardest hit by the job cuts, with seven of 12 employees gone, according to information provided to Friends of the Everglades. DOGE also has terminated the lease for the science center’s main building in Homestead.
Over the decades, scientists at the center — called the South Florida Natural Resource Center — have conducted research that led to some of the most consequential decisions ever made for the Everglades.
They published a report in 1969 that helped stop the world’s largest airport from being built in what’s now Big Cypress National Preserve. That report was instrumental in helping Friends of the Everglades and allies stop the Everglades Jetport.
Those same scientists also produced research proving the ancient cypress forest north of Everglades National Park was worth saving, leading to the creation of Big Cypress National Preserve in 1974.
And now this science center is tasked with monitoring Everglades restoration’s ecological impacts. I spoke recently to Bob Johnson, who led the South Florida Natural Resource Center for 25 years and currently works as a contract science advisor at Everglades National Park.
“It makes it harder for us to determine whether or not we’re getting the return on our investments,” he said of the cuts. “We’re spending billions of dollars on Everglades restoration.”
As restoration projects near the finish line, science is more important than ever — to ensure we do the job right.
Friends of the Everglades is tracking these federal cuts and made our objections known to members of Congress. We invite you to do the same by taking two minutes to send this message to your Senators and Representatives. Then ask your friends and family to do the same, whether they live in Florida or another state. We’re in this together, and we’re stronger together.
