Wilderness Watch is urging the National Park Service to develop a strong new Wilderness Stewardship Plan for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness in Everglades National Park in South Florida. Unfortunately, the agency seems headed down the wrong path with its initial ideas.
The 1,296,500-acre Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness is the largest Wilderness east of the Rocky Mountains. The park’s nine distinct habitat types—hardwood hammock, pineland, freshwater marl prairie, freshwater slough, cypress, coastal lowland, mangrove, and marine and estuarine—are home to rare and endangered species like the manatee, American crocodile, and elusive Florida panther. The area is also a World Heritage Site, an International Biosphere Reserve, and a Wetland of International Importance.
Unfortunately, the National Park Service has allowed development and otherwise greatly disturbed nature in the Everglades for decades, including within the Wilderness. The agency allows motorized boats (airboats and others) to disrupt what are supposed to be quiet wilderness waters, including its well-publicized 99-mile-long Wilderness Waterway. In another travesty, the National Park Service has allowed the area’s natural water flow to be altered by maintaining canal plugs on artificial canals and pumping stations inside Wilderness. This is typical of the agency’s penchant for manipulating Wilderness so as to create what it sees as “desired conditions,” rather than letting Wilderness determine its own conditions.
In our comments, we urged the National Park Service to do the following to protect Wilderness in the Everglades:
• Remove motorized boats from wilderness waters, including the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway;
• Remove structures and installations from the Wilderness, including canal plugs, pumping stations, and more;
• Remove emphases on “desired conditions,” which represents the human manipulation of Wilderness, and let a wild, untrammeled Wilderness create its own natural conditions; and• Increase wilderness-compatible efforts to minimize non-native species and to restore natural water flows
to and through the Everglades.
Photo: Daniel Blankenship/NPS
