EVERGLADES PROPHECY
BY ROGER WILLIAMS rwilliams@florida-weekly.com

On the very day that a Calusa warrior shot Ponce de Leon in the leg with a reed arrow, the bald cypress tree that hosts a ghost orchid blooming this week in the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary probably stood in a halo of silence. Only waist-high, perhaps, and a mere 50 miles to the south of the sharp firefight between Europeans and Americans, it was still untouched by noisome human adventure.

That was 486 years ago, in the winter of 1521. Now, for the third time since a bird-watcher spotted it at the beginning of July, the most ascendant ghost orchid ever seen by a living Floridian remains visibly in bloom on that tree on the traditional western edge of the Everglades. The tree itself, standing about 150 feet off the boardwalk and a mile into the swamp, is one of the oldest and proudest of its kind in North America.

Improbably, both tree and orchid are alive. Improbably, the orchid displayed as many as a dozen blossoms variously in the last 12 weeks, becoming a news darling (it has three blooms at the moment). And improbably, it reaches more than 50 feet high on the trunk of the now-500-year-old bald cypress - that's roughly 30 feet higher than other ghost orchids.

COURTESY PHOTO The South Florida Water Management District along with the Army Corps of Engineers is charged with fixing the Everglades.

Could this startling flower be a natural prophesy of sorts? Might the Everglades really be restored in the next couple of decades, blooming gloriously again like the orchid as federal and state officials have promised - with injections of money, political will, unselfish sacrifice, good judgment and deep caring? (That would amount to quite a feat, since its blood supply, plenty of clean water in natural cycles, has been cauterized by contemporary human ambitions more compelling than anything Ponce de Leon ever imagined.)

There are only two answers to the question, each with a number of variations on the theme. One holds that the Everglades (what's left of them) can be saved, and the other holds that they can't.

The former view relies on science and engineering predictions, along with political prognostications; the latter view is often a matter of personal experience.

JUDAH

"Can they be saved?" asks Barbara Osceola-Butera, a Seminole. "No. We would have to go back years and years and years to that sort of living, with no major highways or all the buildings and construction. It'll never go back, it'll never be the same, I don't care how much money you throw at it."

More than 40 years ago, her life was defined by a chickee village, with a cook fire in the middle. Around it, she, her grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins and their families ate and slept, she recalls. Her grandparents grew vegetables, they raised farm animals, and they harvested wildlife, hunting and gigging copious numbers of fish.

"There weren't rules and regulations to worry about. We bathed in the canals next to the village, and they were clean enough to do that. I was never sick. We walked barefoot all the time, and during ceremonial times we'd go back in (to the 'Glades) for a week at a time with our bundles on our backs.

WEHLE

"Now it's all rock and the land is not full of water. Around (US) 41 where we used to travel, lots of turtles and the birds we used to hunt and eat are gone. The deer are not there anymore. My cousins who live on the Miccosukee reservation can't even eat any fish anymore; they're poisoned with mercury. And it's been invaded by humans - you see trash and garbage, tracks - people use it as a dumping ground. I would not let my grandchildren take a step in there now, barefoot."

Bill Hammond, tagged by the daily newspaper last week as "the closest thing the local environmental movement has to a holy father," sees it only somewhat differently.

"Half the Everglades is covered by development and drained, so the remaining half is mostly interior wetlands. We've lost the upland connections. So you're never going to restore the traditional Everglades, but you can restore functionality. Our science is better, we know a lot more than we did even 10 years ago. Water management issues are the key to that. We humans control that."

Take a lickin,' keep on politicin'

Meanwhile, the fragile connection between mercenary Spaniard, bald cypress, and highly endangered October orchid supports the entire modern history of the Everglades, like the thin thread of a heavy necklace laced through a half-millennium of time. Each of its elements remains alive, if barely - except the Spaniard. Ponce de Leon died in Cuba as a result of the arrow wound, having failed to find either the fountain of youth or great quantities of gold.

And now even the remaining 1.5 million acres of preserved Everglades are seemingly pinched and cancerous; wading and nesting birds have declined 93 percent in the southern Everglades in 75 short years, according to the U.S. Park Service. Where you now see one, as late as the 1930s you might have seen 10. And the tree islands, either parched or drowned, are mostly dying or dead, says Hammond.

The fact that George W. Bush's administration, represented by the U.S. Department of the Interior, in June convinced the United Nations to removed Everglades National Park from its list of the most endangered sites important to all humans on the planet, does not impress many Floridians familiar with the 'Glades.

And in the minds of many it confirms the notion held by Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah, that the problem is not economic, but political.

"Our natural system is extremely resilient, and given the opportunity can rebound

from the brink of complete devastation to a fully functioning system," he insists.

"The 'Glades can be saved, but it's not a function of money. It's a function of political will. It means doing the right things in terms of hydrological management of water right from the headwaters of the watershed flowing into the Everglades, as opposed to water being severed and re-routed and reduced in quality and quantity. If we do that, we can nurture and sustain a healthy Everglades system."

That, of course, would benefit every living soul in Lee County - which is Judah's stake in the game - since restored water-flow southward might provide the greatest stimulus in resurrecting the west-bound Caloosahatchee River (known as C-43 by the government), which is now little more than a waste canal, and its sizeable basin.

WILEY

Judah embraces a plan that would send water from Okeechobee south in a long shallow spillway roughly between two Broward County canals (and right through some sugar cane fields there): the Miami Canal and the North River Canal, which are separated by about 15 miles. And from there to pump stations and cleaning stations and into the Everglades.

But Everglades champions such as Judah keep running into "ands," "ifs" or "buts," along with "althoughs," they say.

Although both the U.S. House and Senate passed a water preservation bill this year which includes an additional $2 billion for the Everglades, Bush has not signed it, and will likely veto it as unnecessarily expensive, pundits say.

Although the federal government promised to pay half of the $10.5 billion estimated at the beginning of the decade as the cost to clean up and restore the 'Glades by 2020 (an estimate that should be doubled now, according to many), so far it's fallen woefully short: Floridians have kicked in about $3 billion, says Judah, but the Feds have only anted up $300 million.

Finally, although the U.S. Sugar Corporation donates some money to help clean up and restore the Everglades, Judah and others compare that effort to "Big Tobacco's" lip service about health issues; the reality, he concludes, is that Sugar officials have made no land available to the government for sale, and their acreage may be the key to the restored health of the existing 'Glades.

"That's why it's a political issue," Judah says. "It comes down to state and federal officials fully recognizing the impediment that the sugarcane fields represent in correcting the hydrological conditions that would restore the Everglades."

Since the water has to flow south in natural cycles - and east and west out of Lake Okeechobee in natural quantities if any systems are to work right again - sugarcane fields have to be surrendered at some point. Not all of them, perhaps, but some of them.

"I would say absolutely, unequivocally, the Everglades can't be restored without (more land)," says Judah. "And Sugar doesn't want to give up a square inch of land. Agriculture, including sugar cane, could be self-sufficient, at least if 60,000 to 120,000 acres were purchased by the Feds and the state to restore the flow-way. "Then we could truly develop a meaningful restoration. But they aren't making that land available for purchase, which is why the state needs to designate the entire Everglades agricultural area as an area of critical concern."

Hammond, who spent three terms on the influential board of the South Florida Water Management District, lends that argument some historical perspective.

"The Everglades core area was set up to grow food - the only other place that was ever done on that scale is the San Joaquin Valley in California. My premise has always been that if that's NOT the public purpose, then taxpayers shouldn't be pumping water to irrigate and drain the farm fields. I precipitated in that debate when the Sugar people wanted us to subsidize their soils out there.

"And I've always been told that the day after Castro dies, Sugar will move back to Cuba. So I asked the Sugar people: 'Are you going to grow vegetables there, like the historic expectation for that land?'

"'Well, sir,' they said, 'We own the land, so we'd have the right to develop it.'

"My response was, 'Why expect the U.S. public to put tax money into draining and pumping water through the system if it isn't to be used for that purpose (food farming)?' The public could close down the pumps and let nature take its course."

What would Marjory do?

It is probably no coincidence that the South Florida Water Management District, the second largest in the United States behind a California district whose responsibilities are much less broad, is responsible for the 16 Florida counties that roughly define the traditional Everglades - a shallow sheet of water flowing over limestone at about three days to the mile, once.

That vast river began near Orlando at the headwaters of the Kissimmee River, flowing south into Lake Okeechobee. Then water moved east down the St. Lucie River and west down the Peace and Caloosahatchee River systems. And much of it moved south again when Okeechobee lapped over, nourishing the southern Everglades and Florida Bay, along with the rich and fecund fishery there and in the Ten Thousand Islands.

So it seems appropriate that the South Florida Water Management District (along with the Army Corps of Engineers) be charged with fixing the 'Glades - with doing much of the actual

work, or marshalling those who do.

But it's not that simple, say Carol Wehle, who heads the 1,750- person organization, with its $1.4 billion budget, $600 million of which is designated for Everglades restoration.

"We have the responsibility for water quality, supply, natural systems, and flood protection," she explains. "That's four major areas as delineated by the State legislature.

"The real challenge for the folks in the District is related to population growth. We have many more challenges than we did before, especially in terms of quality and supply issues. And with the anticipated growth, it will be that much more pronounced 10 years from now."

Which may not bode well for the Everglades.

So what can you do? What would anybody do? What, in fact, would Marjory Stoneman Douglas do, the renowned author of "The Everglades: River of Grass," the woman credited with first saving the Everglades from complete annihilation?

Bill Hammond knew her, and he figures if it's good enough for her, it's probably good enough for anybody who cares.

"Marjory would be around pounding on tables in front of officials," he says. "She'd put on her glasses, pull on her hat, tighten the band a little, and scold the politicians. Then she'd go home and have a bourbon at 5 p.m."

Shooting the Ghost Orchid

The ghost orchid photographer R.J. Wiley shot in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and shown on the front page of this edition of Florida Weekly, is a rarity among rarities: only about 1,000 of the flowers probably exist in the world, they're rarely seen, they rarely offer more than a few blooms, and almost never at a height of more than about 25 feet.

This one, however, has been blooming since July with as many as a dozen blooms at a time; its root system extends up the trunk of a 500-year-old bald cypress tree more than 50 feet, which means the flower is more than 50 years old, since they grow about an inch a year. And it's existence, Wiley says, "is just about as close to a natural miracle as anything can be." You'd think that it would be easy to take a shot of something only 150 feet off the boardwalk. But no, especially not when the swamp's managers don't want you tramping around. "So I had to send to New York and spend $9,000 on a special lens," says Wiley. "Then I had to shoot the flower at exactly the right time of day, with the right light, from the boardwalk." So he shot morning and night, in and out of thunderstorms, mosquito swarms and wind. Finally, at 6:23 p.m. one recent evening, with the light coming straight out of the west behind him, he got the right picture. His camera was ratcheted and wired to the boardwalk. "With something this rare," he says, "you just want to do it right." You can look at a variety of his work at www. adayintheswamp.com, or find him at www. corkscrew.audubon.org/NatureStore/NS_ giftstat.html. If you wish to e-mail him or telephone him, try Thermax292@comcast.net, or call 239- 992-6367.

- Roger Williams