Threats
The Florida Keys and Everglades help fuel the engines of two of Florida's biggest industries: tourism and fishing. In the Keys alone, more than three million tourists visit every year, and commercial fishermen land nearly 20 million pounds of seafood, more than any other county in Florida. The Everglades provide most of south Florida's cities and farms with freshwater. Unfortunately, skyrocketing population growth, increasingly heavy use of natural resources and the radical re-engineering of Everglades water flow have led to severe environmental degradation throughout South Florida.
Thirteen of the fifteen reef fish species targeted for harvest in the Keys are overfished. Pink shrimp, spiny lobster, red drum, and sea trout populations have suffered severe declines. Coral health - plagued by new diseases, bleaching linked to global climate change, and runaway algal growth - is deteriorating; and the Keys' near shore waters are polluted by nearly 7 million gallons of nutrient-rich effluent per day, which has been linked to poor water quality, mass die-offs of seagrass and sponges, and the presence of human viruses--including polio and hepatitis--in the environment.
The Everglades, once a healthy eight-million acre river of grass, has been reduced to half of its original size by agriculture, urban sprawl and unwise water management. Early settlers and later the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drained large portions of the Everglades, fundamentally altered the quantity, quality, timing and distribution of water throughout the system, and spurred the conversion of wilderness into sugarcane farms and suburban neighborhoods. The remaining Everglades are deeply imperiled - marshes are being starved of water while tree islands are drowned; cattails are crowding out native sawgrass, and with it, the countless tiny organisms that form the base of the food chain; Lake Okeechobee and the estuaries have become catch basins for canals full of polluted runoff; and wading bird populations have become mere shadows of their once-vast numbers.
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