Destruction is a serious matter. The lingering damages associated with diminished biological wealth, habitat loss, and a decline in the genetic diversity of large “charismatic” species, such as panthers, or bears are so extreme that Florida ranks among the top three states on the critical list with the highest number of endangered natural areas in all of North America. Only Arizona and California are as large and growing as quickly as Florida is and as we consume resources for this growth, wildlife, fisheries and wilder places are damaged or destroyed.

The loss of bottomland hardwood forest, twenty springs and nearly forty miles of river and stream banks with the flooding of Rodman basin meant the loss of a species rich estuarine and anadromous fishery and displacement of wildlife. The wildlife associated with the adjacent swamps of the Ocklawaha, or crooked, river were well studied before they were displaced.

Katherine Ewel has suggested that "The edges of floodplain forests, with mast-producing bottomland hardwoods and proximity to other species in adjoining mesic forests, therefore support perhaps the greatest density and diversity of wildlife in Florida." Furthermore in her expert opinion, "Few blackwater river swamps have been studied; one major exception is the Ocklawaha River swamp, parts of which are inundated by the construction of Rodman Dam." *

According to the Florida Natural Areas Inventory of the state's landscape types, "mixed hardwood swamp" accounts for only 5 percent of Florida's land area and over 6000 acres of that vegetative association was destroyed when about 9000 acres were flooded in the Rodman basin by the Florida barge canal's primary dam, in 1968. But millions of dormant seeds under the reservoir's edge, can be recovered and may flourish once again.

Why restore this river?

Bears, otters, striped bass, sea turtles, sand hill cranes, gopher tortoises, wood storks, and manatees are among the indicator species whose loss and decline in habitat are clues to us all. These species are the modern "canaries in the coal mine" of excessive consumption, damaging development, and exploding population demanding more space, more water, and more repose than the planet can possibly satisfy. As creatures who need space, food, and clean water, these and other species tell us about our impact on natural areas. For instance our contamination of their living space can exceed the assimilative capacity of a stream, or hammock to absorb our waste. In parts of the state based on the absence of indicator species, human impacts have gone beyond any tolerable extreme for wildlife or fish. Among the fastest growing of the largest states in the nation, Florida must preserve remnants today of what was once a most varied and enchanting array of interdependent plants and animals.

"Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world."

EOW

This state's unprecedented, rapid growth and the concurrent loss of sufficient wild places are among the primary reasons why the restoration of the Ocklawaha River and the Everglades must occur soon and take place without compromise. When added to the strain of a rotten infrastructure, overcrowded schools, prisons, and recreation areas the case for restoration of altered landscapes is nonnegotiable.
 

This may seem, on the surface, as an extreme position. Why not compromise on keeping a costly dam, or why not just restore a piece of south Florida? After all, compromise is the best way for everyone to win. That is true, politically we may all get some more schools, some more prisons and some more beach renourishment. More ramps for people to launch boats, more picnic grounds. What can possibly be wrong with all of us winning a piece of the political pork pie that has become the annual budgets of Florida’s legislative process? 

The sinuosity of the ancient bed of the Ocklawaha River can be see in the lower left-hand foreground below the long straight line of Rodman Dam.

While we the people may all win, and that is debatable if you are poor, Hispanic, Black or an immigrant, our wildlife will lose by developing the remaining forested wetlands and wilder streamsides of the state. Florida is constitutionally bound to protect the wildlife and fisheries which the state holds in trust for all of the people.

Wildlife such as black bears need hundreds of acres just to survive, they need thousands of acres to flourish. Unless we reduce the last outdoor sanctuaries to the size of zoos, the future for Florida’s wildlife is grim because they must compete with us for water, area and food.

As we have altered the landscape with needed highways for commercial and residential  development, human demands have diverted the water flow thereby diminishing the quality and the habitats for animals to live within safely. 

Imprisoned within concrete, encircled by civilization in the form of strip malls and polluted by pesticide and herbicide runoff, our thriving alligator population, for example, is seriously affected by gender bending chemicals.

Silver Springs before the digging of the Cross Florida Barge Canal; the Silver River is a major source of the Ocklawaha River.

Percent of land use by types in the Ocklawaha Basin 1980-1990:
 

Unless we restore large sections of Florida for bears, alligators and limpkins where the water is uncontaminated and the food sources are plentiful, we will have lost our early warning system when these magnificent beasts are extirpated. To compromise in this context is a perverse incentive for risking our future well being. We and the wildlife together depend of fresh water, clean water that is disease free. But today our water sources are dangerous to people and wildlife alike. Contamination by nitrogen and phosphorus have destroyed our springs, rivers and estuaries. Will we be far behind?

By early warning system, I mean that, wildlife are indicators of the environmental contaminants that are threats to human life. What ever is the cause of deformed alligators may have the same effect on farm workers or children who play near toxic waste dumps because their schools are built on or near dump sites. If we intend to make the world safer for our vulnerable children, then we must recognize the necessity of wildlife and wild places for us to learn from and to change our ways. If we compromise and restore only part of the Everglades, or take away half of Rodman reservoir we do not secure that future for wildlife because critical size and essential nurseries, migratory routes, or feeding ground may be dangerously separated from nesting places.

Without wildlife our life is diminished.

Without the clues that healthy wildlife provide us with we become more vulnerable to pollution. Compromising with a species future is morally repulsive to many in Florida, but it is a breach of the constitutional responsibility of the state to protect wildlife. Water, wild places and uncontaminated ranges are essential in order to nourish wildlife. Just as a family can not long share its bedroom with strangers so too wildlife can not persist without sufficient wild places.

The restoration of Rodman basin, means many things.

• Water withdrawal for vegetative recovery:

The removal of the water in two or three stages to allow a revegetation to occur. The mosaic pattern found along the river valley between Silver River and the Deep Creek basin suggests that upland, and streamside vegetation will return along a gradient. That means scrub in the dry uplands, mesic forest in the transition areas, and eventually a bottomland hardwood swamp along the river's flood plain will repopulate the basin. Such patterns can be seen today where the SR 40 bridge crosses the river.

• Animal recovery including over 40 miles of access to the river's shores would enable a variety of small mammals to move more quickly through the valley and cross the river. Studies reveal that indigo snakes, bears, sand hill cranes and deer are among the larger more visible creatures to benefit from this natural revegetation.

• Twenty springs have been recorded along the – now submerged portion of – river from Fort McCoy to the dam. One stream from Marion, Blue springs was, and could be again, a popular place to run the river from.

Although the popular benefits to the public are multiple, there is a less selfish reason for draining the basin so its ecological integrity is revived. Henry David Thoreau once said we are rich by what we can afford to do without. Few would adopt such a measure today. But in a very real sense, the removing the flood water and rejuvenating a very diverse hardwood forest, would resurrect from "cold storage" the wild heart of the crooked river. Flowing again freely into the Saint Johns River, the Ocklawaha and Silver Rivers become ever-more rare places of quiet beauty. But for fish, deer, bears, and manatees, removing the water from their home range, nursery or feeding grounds means we can afford to give a taste for wildness back to those who live after us.

That the restoration of Silver Springs and the Ocklawaha River be completed quickly is as necessary as the reconstruction of the far more difficult restoration of that mighty and nourishing river of grass we call the Everglades.