{"id":1561,"date":"2014-02-05T19:29:50","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T01:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2019-11-02T17:55:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T23:55:24","slug":"the-swamp-the-everglades-florida-and-the-politics-of-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1561","title":{"rendered":"The Swamp, The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Michael Grunwald, 2006, Simon and Shuster Paperbacks, New York<\/p>\n<p>Prior to reading this book, I really didn&#8217;t understand the reasons why the Everglades are such a critical component of the South Florida ecosystem.&nbsp; The bottom line is that, without the Everglades, it is doubtful that this area would be able to support the levels of human population that currently live here.<\/p>\n<p>My wife and I took our kids into the park back in 1981, but we had absolutely no idea that the Everglades were so threatened at that time.&nbsp; The author provides a great deal of history of the development of South Florida.&nbsp; He then goes on to provide a more recent history and how&nbsp;the politics and interests of the developers have impacted the Everglades and the environment.<\/p>\n<p>There are some projects currently underway to, hopefully, help restore the Everglades.&nbsp; Long stretches of bridges are being built to raise portions of the Tamiami Trail between Naples and Miami in order to restore the flow of the Everglades to the ocean.&nbsp; There are also battles going on the control the release of water from Lake Okeechobee to the Chattahoochee River.&nbsp; This book provides perspective as to the importance of these events.&nbsp; However, because the book ends in 2006 and it is now 2014, there is quite a gap between what was going on then and now.&nbsp; I will need to find some more recent material to bring me up to date on what has transpired since the book was written.<img decoding=\"async\" title=\"4 stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-4-0.gif\" alt=\"4 stars\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Michael Grunwald, 2006, Simon and Shuster Paperbacks, New York Prior to reading this book, I really didn&#8217;t understand the reasons why the Everglades are such a critical component of the South Florida ecosystem.&nbsp; The bottom line is that, without <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=1561\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[20,27,16,38],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","tag-history","tag-natural-history","tag-non-fiction","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2504,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/2504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}