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Everglades once covered almost 11,000 square miles of south Florida. Just a century ago, water flowed down the Kissimmee River into Lake Okeechobee, then south through the Everglades to the flats of Florida Bay. In 1905, Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward began a concerted effort to drain the Everglades to make the land suitable for agriculture and development. In 1948, the U.S. Congress authorized the Central and South Florida Project , which created the most effective water management system in the world. An extensive network of man-made canals, levees and water control structures channel 1.7 billion gallons of water daily from the Everglades out into the ocean. The loss of water changed the natural character of the marsh. As the water receded so did the habitat for wading birds, fish and dozens of animals. Saltwater flowed farther into the marsh from the ocean, and pollution flowed in from neighboring farms and cities. Changes in water quality stifled the growth of native plants, allowed exotic plants to take root and fueled the growth of algae that worsened the loss of natural habitat. The cycle continued for the last half of the 1900s. As a result, the Everglades today is half the size it was a century ago.

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