By Amber Crooks, Senior Environmental Policy Advisor, Conservancy of Southwest Florida
The Big Cypress National Preserve is nationally significant, providing water flows that sustain drinking water aquifers and much of its neighboring Everglades National Park. The over 2 million visitors each year are in good company with the over 360 wildlife species that make the Big Cypress rich with biodiversity. Most times, however, you can truly feel the quiet peacefulness of wilderness embodied.
On one of my first visits to the Preserve, I volunteered to survey Big Cypress fox squirrels, an imperiled animal. With my equipment in hand, I ventured into a cypress dome not far from the old Jetport site, which lies just outside of the Preserve boundary.
I felt as if something was watching me, and I turned to find a barred owl observing me instead. And the Big Cypress first left its indelible mark on me. Other such moments came soon thereafter. I saw my first endangered red cockaded woodpecker (the Big Cypress is an important area for their recovery), and lost sleep to enjoy a foggy sunrise at Deep Lake, hoping for a glimpse of a Florida panther in its core habitat.
Camping at Big Cypress’s Burn Lake forged friendships over the campfire. Hiking at Fire Prairie Trail reconnected our groups of friends, years later, after some had moved away. Late-night visits to the Preserve to look at the starry skies provided memories I won’t soon forget. The lands found within the Big Cypress watershed were always the foundation for our adventures.
Big Cypress is a wonderland. Even an inch or two changes in elevation can naturally create different environments from the forest to the marl prairies. An army of diminutive “hat-rack” cypress (though small, they can be over 2,000 years old) makes me feel like I’m towering over the trees. In other areas, without the caprock to limit their growth, a cathedral of long-legged cypress reminds me again how tiny I am within this 720,000-acre expanse.
The beauty of Big Cypress is not only in the grandeur of its vast landscapes, but in its little surprises. Through the looking glass, I find a pink grass orchid. Looking closer yet, I find a spider hiding behind its petals.
The Big Cypress watershed is a beautiful yet threatened region of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. On one end of the Big Cypress Preserve, we see thousands of acres of proposed development and mining eating away at wetlands and listed species habitat. Within the Preserve, we continue to fight for restoration and mitigation of damage caused by oil drilling surveys.
The 24,960-acre Jetport site (known today as Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport), located between the Big Cypress, Everglades National Park, and Tribal lands, was a hard-fought battle to win. Envisioned to be the largest airport in the world, construction began in 1968. The Jetport project was halted in 1970, as it was recognized that such intensification would impact the environmentally sensitive areas in this region.
The environmental community does not take this win for granted, with bad ideas on how to utilize the Jetport property for expanded uses over the years emerging from time to time, all of which have failed. However, in late June, the state of Florida is moving equipment onto the Jetport site for a 1,000-person (perhaps 5,000-person) detention center, with no known existing water or wastewater infrastructure. Due to the expedited process, there have been no publicly available permit materials or plans to further understand what specifically is envisioned, but intensification in this area is of great cause of concern for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
More transparency is needed to fully understand how traffic could impact species, how lighting could impact dark skies, how fencing could impact wildlife connectivity, and how waste and water will be managed for that magnitude of people, amongst other things.
What happens in the Western Everglades weighs significantly on the health of the broader ecosystem, with 40% of water entering Everglades National Park coming from the Big Cypress. The area is key habitat for many species, including the endangered Florida panther. The Preserve provides the darkest skies east of the Mississippi and is an accredited International Dark Sky Place.
The Big Cypress is part of our revered public lands, entwining a deep history and a profound natural marvel. We urge the decision makers to consider alternatives to intensifying the Jetport site. Take action here: conservancy.org/takeaction.