We know the bad-news reel gets old. It’s good to stop and remember what we’re working so hard to protect. Here’s your dose of Everglades zen.
Take a look at the 11-second video above. Posted to Twitter by Shannon Estenoz, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Park, it offers a glimpse of the completed restoration of the Kissimmee River from a channelized canal back to historic, winding oxbows.
Twenty-two years after construction began, the project represents progress our founder, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, would be proud of. She spoke vehemently about the disastrous impacts that removing the serpentine curves of the Everglades’ headwaters would have on the entire flowing ecosystem from the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes to Florida Bay — famously writing in her book, “Voice of the River” that the C&SF projects were “interrelated stupidity” crowned by the C-38 canal.
She, and many others, were right. The modification from shallow, meandering river to a deep, high-speed, high-volume conduit of untreated water was quickly realized for its detriment to the natural environment, leading to one of the world’s largest river ecosystem restoration projects in history.
Last week, decades of work to return over 40 miles of historic flow and restore more than 40 square miles of river floodplain was finished. Now, flows through the ecosystem will travel farther, take longer and filter naturally — exactly the way nature intended.
This is what successful restoration looks like. These are the outcomes worth fighting for.
