Branner Blog

The Everglades are in the news again, with Congress for the first time (11/9/07) over-riding one of President Bush’s rare vetoes. At issue was a $23.2 billion water projects bill, which includes funds for restoring the damaged southern Florida ecosystem. For a vivid picture of the Everglades landscape and ecology before decades of development changed it, read Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s “Everglades, River of Grass.” The first edition came out in 1947, a revised edition in 1978, a 50th anniversary edition in 1997, and the 60th anniversary edition this year. Douglas was a lifelong champion of the ‘glades, and a long life indeed she lived: 108 years. Even in old age, she was a riveting speaker. Before she was an environmentalist, Douglas was a journalist (for her father’s Miami Herald newspaper), and her book contains lively stories of early Florida history and flamboyant personalities. Although untrained in science, she had taken a course at Wellesley in environmental geography, so she saw and wrote about the Everglades as a complex system, whose fragile aquatic balance was greatly impacted by agriculture (sugar-growing in the south and dairy-farming in the north), drainage, channelling, and “improvement.” She grasped the intricate interplay between environment and public policy, and strove to influence policy in the direction of preserving the unique and precious region she cherished.