Protecting the Everglades Means Protecting Florida’s Future

The Everglades is not just a place on a map — it is a living system that defines Florida. It shapes our water, our wildlife, our climate resilience, and our cultural identity. When we talk about protecting the Everglades, we are talking about protecting the future of this state.

In recent years, however, a series of state-level decisions have raised serious concerns among scientists, educators, conservationists, and everyday Floridians who care deeply about our wildlands.

Recently, Florida has seen policies and projects that weaken long-standing environmental safeguards — often in subtle ways that don’t make headlines, but have lasting consequences.

Limiting Local Tools to Protect Water

Local governments have long played a critical role in protecting water quality, especially by regulating fertilizer use during Florida’s rainy season. Temporarily blocking or discouraging local fertilizer ordinances may sound bureaucratic, but the impact is real: excess nutrients flow into canals, rivers, and wetlands, fueling algae blooms and degrading ecosystems that ultimately feed the Everglades.

Clean water begins at the neighborhood level. When local communities lose the ability to act, everyone downstream pays the price.

Removing Climate from the Conversation

Florida is one of the most climate-vulnerable places in the country. Rising seas, stronger storms, saltwater intrusion, and flooding already affect Everglades habitats and coastal wetlands. Removing climate change language from state energy policy does not make these realities disappear — it simply makes them harder to address.

Ignoring climate science does not protect Florida’s economy or environment. It leaves our most fragile ecosystems, including the Everglades, less prepared for what is already happening.

Weakening Public Oversight of Development

Recent laws that discourage citizen-led legal challenges to development place a financial burden on Floridians who speak up to protect their communities. These challenges have historically been one of the most effective ways to stop or modify projects that would drain wetlands, fragment wildlife habitat, or pollute waterways.

When public voices are silenced, unchecked development follows — and Florida’s wildlands shrink a little more each time.

Risky Infrastructure and Industrial Decisions

Allowing experimental use of toxic industrial by-products in road construction, extending mining permits near sensitive ecosystems, and advancing large infrastructure projects without robust environmental review all increase risk to Florida’s water and land. The Everglades is not resilient because it is untouched — it is resilient only when it is protected.

And large-scale projects like the inhumane camps being built at the cruelly-named Alligator Alcatraz, without transparency or scientific scrutiny, set dangerous precedents for how we treat irreplaceable landscapes.

Restoration Must Be More Than Funding

Florida has invested significant money in Everglades restoration, and funding matters. But restoration is not just a budget line — it is a commitment to science-based planning, public accountability, and long-term thinking.

True restoration means addressing pollution at its source, respecting tribal lands, protecting surrounding wildlands, and ensuring that political agendas do not override ecological reality.

Why This Matters

The Everglades is a classroom without walls. It is where children learn how water moves, how species depend on one another, and how human choices shape ecosystems. When we weaken protections for the Everglades, we are teaching the wrong lesson — that short-term convenience outweighs long-term responsibility.

Protecting the Everglades is not partisan. It is practical. It is scientific. And it is essential.

Florida’s wildlands deserve leadership rooted in stewardship, transparency, and respect for the natural systems that sustain us all.