Stephen Davis: The Everglades Foundation's Chief Science Officer explains how the everglades works, what's wrong with it and its ongoing restoration

From the first time Stephen Davis visited the everglades, he has been drawn by the unique beauty of its wetlands landscape. As the Chief Science Officer of The Everglades Foundation, he has pursued the restoration of the everglades and expanded on the science and knowledge that guides that complex task.  

Transcript

00:00:02:10 - 00:00:16:20
Unknown
Welcome to the nature of Florida, the Sunshine State's only podcast dedicated to its wild and natural places and the fight to preserve them. I'm your host, Oscar Corral, a two time Emmy Award winning filmmaker and journalist. I've dedicated much of my career to making films about environmental issues.

00:00:16:21 - 00:00:32:01
Unknown
Tune in each week to hear from a broad range of voices from scientists to surfers, activists to mermaids who are working on the front lines to save what's left of Florida's natural beauty and its wildlife. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Nature of Florida podcast.

00:00:32:11 - 00:00:44:09
Unknown
With me here today is Dr. Steve (Stephen) Davis, Stephen Davis, who's the chief science officer for the Everglades Foundation. Welcome, Steve. How are you? I'm well, thanks, Oscar. Good to be here. So what does that mean? You're the chief science officer for the Everglades Foundation.

00:00:44:10 - 00:01:13:08
Unknown
What exactly do you do? It's actually a new position for the organization. We've had a science program for close to 15 years, an organization that's almost 28 years old. Much of that we've had a staff of scientists and typically the science department has had a director who helps to sort of coordinate the science within the organization.

00:01:14:10 - 00:01:34:22
Unknown
But in my tenure with the organization, I've been with the Everglades Foundation for 12 and a half years now. I've really seen the importance of engagement of our with our science, other agencies that conduct science, academic institutions that do Everglades science.

00:01:34:23 - 00:02:05:00
Unknown
And we collaborate with to communicate our science broadly, not just with other scientists, but to our supporters, to our board of directors, really engaging and communicating across levels and interfacing with our other programs at the Everglades Foundation, our policy team, our education team, as well as communications and our fundraising component.

00:02:05:01 - 00:02:32:22
Unknown
We're a nonprofit organization. We raise our budget every year through private donations. And so it's really the chief science officer is a reflection that we do much more than science internally in communicating with other scientists. It's really integrating our science across our programs at the foundation, but also engaging broadly throughout the community to really get across the

00:02:32:22 - 00:02:46:01
Unknown
importance of why Everglades restoration is important. Now, I know you're originally from Ohio. I read that in your profile, and I also read that you obtained your Ph.D. at a few. What did you research there? What was that like?

00:02:47:03 - 00:03:13:00
Unknown
Well, actually, it was more focused on Florida Bay and the the the research itself was really a precursor to Everglades restoration. The focus was to understand how increased freshwater flows through the Everglades would affect the coastal mangroves as well as Florida Bay itself.

00:03:13:13 - 00:03:38:19
Unknown
So we spent several years working with the South Florida Water Management District, working with the Park Service, working with collaborators, all at Louisiana State University, and conducted a multi-year study that looked at everything from wetland health, water quality, focusing on both Florida Bay and the mangroves.

00:03:39:07 - 00:03:58:16
Unknown
And and what we concluded was that these mangroves would benefit from increased freshwater flow and that there would be no deleterious impacts to Florida Bay. Some people were positing that increasing freshwater flow to Florida Bay would be a bad thing.

00:03:59:01 - 00:04:15:16
Unknown
And the science very clearly shows that Florida Bay was a much fresher ecosystem before we drain the Everglades. It goes without saying there was more freshwater going in, and so that was a healthier estuary and our work just helped to support that.

00:04:16:12 - 00:04:40:18
Unknown
But it in partnership with the Water Management District, who's a key, the state partner in well, glades restoration, it really put the research on the map. And at a very early point in my career, early on in your research, you had an interest in the Everglades and you noticed through your own scientific research that fresh water supplies

00:04:40:19 - 00:05:02:08
Unknown
were important in order to keep not just the Everglades before the bay healthy. Tell me tell me how that instilled in you a lifelong interest in the Everglades and in helping to restore them. Well, I think it really started with my interest at a young age in the environment.

00:05:02:20 - 00:05:23:05
Unknown
And I grew up in a suburban middle class household, didn't have, you know, a connection to a forest or rivers or anything like that. But I was fortunate enough to spend quite a bit of time with my grandfather, who was who was a farmer, actually.

00:05:23:05 - 00:05:47:20
Unknown
And he would take me outdoors. We would go to parks, we would trap squirrels that were eating his apples and release them out in natural areas. And it was just those experiences of understanding the importance of soil, the importance of clean water and and in growing plants.

00:05:47:20 - 00:06:14:11
Unknown
And so it was those interactions that really intrigued me at an early age. And I knew when I went to graduate school that I was interested in biology, that I was interested in more field oriented activities. But it's really the beauty of of an undergraduate to graduate research experience that allows you to explore things that may be

00:06:14:12 - 00:06:40:01
Unknown
of interest to you. And for me, it was really focusing more on the water. And, and in my master's degree, I realized I wanted to continue studying aquatic ecosystems. And the opportunity to work in the Everglades was, to me, it was just such a foreign place coming from the Midwest temperate zone, where half the year it was

00:06:40:01 - 00:07:03:13
Unknown
just too cold or too gray to really grow a lot of plants. But my first experience in South Florida was like, everything's green. It rains so much throughout the year. And and then the Everglades, just this vast tropical subtropical wilderness that supported alligators and crocodiles and wading birds of all colors and sizes.

00:07:03:13 - 00:07:33:23
Unknown
And it was just fascinating. So that opportunity and then the just the interest in coming down here, it really stuck. And of course, the cultural diversity, the biological diversity, everything about South Florida just became an attractive and the research that I did studying the Everglades and wanting to actually contribute to this notion of restoration really got a

00:07:33:23 - 00:07:58:04
Unknown
hold on me and hasn't let go because I'm still doing that work today. I love the work that I do and and really get to engage at a high level in cutting edge science and the work that we do at the foundation, being able to see how it plugs directly into and shapes the trajectory of Everglades restoration

00:07:58:04 - 00:08:09:18
Unknown
has been quite gratifying. Do you remember your first encounter with the Everglades? Do you have a memory of that? Was it something memorable or was it more like a man? It's hot and muggy and mosquito filled out here.

00:08:09:18 - 00:08:30:01
Unknown
And what am I going to do out here? What was that like? It was a few things. The colors and the smells. Being on Florida Bay and seeing these aquamarine colors that just didn't exist anywhere else, I thought it was just this otherworldly kind of place.

00:08:30:02 - 00:08:48:04
Unknown
And then this beautiful blues and greens offset, you know, with the mangroves and the sea grasses, the water so clear that, you know, you could be in six feet of water and it looked like you might be able to just step into it ankle deep.

00:08:48:04 - 00:09:10:24
Unknown
It was so it wasn't like a specific event. It was just being in awe of the experience. You mentioned water and the importance of water in your own research and in in the Everglades ecosystem. Tell me about the role that water plays in the Everglades and about how how that's trying to be restored right now.

00:09:11:01 - 00:09:39:22
Unknown
Let's start with the importance of water in the Everglades. Well, fundamentally, the Everglades is a massive wetland ecosystem and therefore it requires water in order for those habitats to be sustained. And the more you learn about the Everglades, the more you realize we've dramatically altered the quantity of water moving through the Everglades.

00:09:39:23 - 00:09:58:18
Unknown
Often times it dries out in the months of March and April, which are sort of late dry season months, simply because there's not that base flow that's coming in from the north as it once did historically. So, so.

00:09:58:18 - 00:10:23:05
Unknown
So historically. How did the Everglades work? The water flowed through the Kissimmee River down to Lake Okeechobee, and then it overflowed the southern bank of Lake Okeechobee. Right. Tell me about how it flowed historically. Yeah, it really when you tie in the watershed north of Lake Okeechobee, that 700 plus square mile freshwater lake in the lower central

00:10:23:24 - 00:10:49:20
Unknown
part of Florida, that watershed goes all the way up to Orlando. And so when you consider that we get roughly 4 to 5 feet of rainfall each year and we're a relatively flat and low lying state. So that water would gradually make its way down the meandering Kissimmee, the chain of lakes all the way to Lake Okeechobee

00:10:50:12 - 00:11:18:22
Unknown
. And so that's a nearly 100 mile journey. It's not flowing off some mountain like, you know, the Appalachians where you get these very steep, high flow environments that are highly erosive. This is a flat, meandering situation. And when the lake would fill up, it would spill over to the south again and to this very flat, low lying

00:11:18:22 - 00:11:40:05
Unknown
landscape that had a slope of about 1 to 2 inches for every mile you went south. So that's not going to carve some major river channel. Instead, what it resulted in is the water fanning out 50 to 60 miles wide and flowing south across that gentle slope as a sheet.

00:11:40:20 - 00:12:01:23
Unknown
And that's what we learned over time was the river of grass. And by cutting off that flow from the north, you're you're basically taking the previous wet season flow of water that would subsidize flows to the south in the dry season by cutting that off.

00:12:02:07 - 00:12:19:22
Unknown
You make it more bipolar where when it rains that 4 to 5 feet on the Everglades, it's wet. And when you get into the dry season, you don't have that previous wet season flow from the north that continually is making its way downstream.

00:12:19:22 - 00:12:44:17
Unknown
Instead, it goes from being very wet to being very dry. And that's the problem that we are really addressing with restoration. It's not about making the wet season wetter. It's really about. Carrying that ecosystem from the freshwater marshes all the way down to places like Florida Bay, getting on through that dry season period so that it doesn't

00:12:44:17 - 00:13:07:12
Unknown
experience that extreme drought. We've created an artificial drought every year for this ecosystem from the water conservation areas through Everglades National Park, all the way out to Florida Bay. And and it's it's making that less severe and trying to hydrated as much as we can during the dry season.

00:13:09:02 - 00:13:32:17
Unknown
Talking about purely economic economic reasoning here, what what importance does the Everglades have for the water supply in south Florida? The Biscayne Aquifer is is where South Florida, Miami-Dade County, Broward, get their water for the most part. And the Biscayne Aquifer, from what I understand, is recharged through the Everglades predominantly.

00:13:33:06 - 00:14:00:03
Unknown
So the Everglades really is South Florida's water supply. Is it not? Tell me about that. It is. And if if you were to draw us sweeping arc from Florida's coastline above Boca Raton and have that arc go all the way out west, encompassing the water conservation areas as far west as that boundary between the Everglades and Big

00:14:00:03 - 00:14:15:13
Unknown
Cypress. And then that arc sweeps all the way down to the southern tip of the peninsula. That's the area that the Biscayne Aquifer encompasses, and it goes from west to east, all the way to the coast and opens up.

00:14:17:11 - 00:14:36:12
Unknown
To the point where historically, when the Everglades was full, you would get water not only making its way into places like Biscayne Bay via surface water through those cuts in that high Atlantic coastal ridge. And by high, I mean about 20 feet.

00:14:36:22 - 00:15:02:14
Unknown
But because the geology that supports the aquifer recharge, which is so transmis of water, moves through it so freely. When the Everglades was full, you would get water, freshwater actually coming out from near the coast into places like Biscayne Bay to where you would get fresh water throughout parts of Biscayne Bay simply bubbling up through the ground

00:15:02:24 - 00:15:22:22
Unknown
. So it was it was an open, connected freshwater ecosystem, both on land and through the bedrock. I think I remember reading somewhere that early South Florida, like European explorers, went to Biscayne Bay and said that in certain areas you can drop a bucket into the water and pull up fresh water.

00:15:22:22 - 00:15:46:01
Unknown
Is that is that true? That's correct, yes. So that water was basically spring water, very active springs that would pump out from underneath the surface of Biscayne Bay. And it's simply because of that the head pressure and the transmissibility of that geology that would would squeeze some of that water through those narrow gaps that we called transverse

00:15:46:01 - 00:16:05:07
Unknown
glades. And that's where many of our coastal canals currently have been constructed. And also the Miami River there were actually falls roughly north of where the Marlins park is currently along the Miami River. So water would move across land.

00:16:05:07 - 00:16:25:05
Unknown
It would move through the ground almost as easily as it moved across land. When you say falls, you mean there were there were waterfalls? Is what you're saying? There were. Tell me about that. There was a drop in elevation that when water levels to the west would get so high, it would actually cascade down a short segment

00:16:25:12 - 00:16:43:17
Unknown
before feeding into the, you know, the navigable area of Miami River today. Wow. So the Miami River had rapids and little waterfalls before. Not far from where Sewell Park is today. Oh, incredible. When I guess, quote unquote, civilization arrived in South Florida.

00:16:44:03 - 00:17:02:24
Unknown
What happened to the Everglades? I think it's important to understand what happened to Florida. And it was it was a push to develop this undeveloped place, this this tropical paradise that folks from up north really, you know, especially during wintertime and to this day, still enjoy.

00:17:03:21 - 00:17:22:12
Unknown
So the idea was to support growth. And and part of that was through Flagler Railroad and and getting tourists down to South Florida all the way to Key West. And in order to support that growth, there was also the need for development.

00:17:22:12 - 00:17:45:02
Unknown
And many people have heard those legends of swamp peddling and selling land that was wet for half the year. There was also a push to advance agriculture. And again, in a state that has a year round growing season, that was desirable.

00:17:45:02 - 00:18:01:01
Unknown
Where I'm from in Ohio, we have a growing season that, you know, by the time you get into late September or early October, you better have your your crops harvested or else, you know, you you run into the possibility of a frost.

00:18:02:09 - 00:18:21:03
Unknown
So having that capacity to grow crops year round was also highly desirable. And of course, our citrus industry grew out of that and benefited from it. But in the Everglades and also for development, in order to make that land available and make it viable, you had to drain it.

00:18:21:21 - 00:18:42:03
Unknown
And so efforts really in earnest to drain the Everglades grew out of that notion that this land is valueless in its present form. How can we make it of value to the economy of that time? And so I make that clear because it wasn't done out of malice.

00:18:42:03 - 00:19:07:24
Unknown
It wasn't done out of, you know, some evil plot to to drain the Everglades. It was it was really done to support the economy of that time. And, of course, today, nearly 100 years later, we've realized that that ecosystem in its present state is not consistent with the economy of today.

00:19:07:24 - 00:19:30:12
Unknown
And we know the economy of today is a tourism based economy. It's one of real estate and property values. And I call that out specifically because we realize the consequences of degraded water quality and degraded Everglades health on those particular areas.

00:19:31:01 - 00:19:50:23
Unknown
Over the years, what happened was that river of grass that used to flow from Lake Okeechobee down straight to full, not straight, but meandering down to Florida Bay was basically drained away in in many areas. Is there is there still a part of it that flows down, or is that part of the Everglades restoration to try to

00:19:50:23 - 00:20:14:16
Unknown
get some of that to flow again? The the natural area of the Everglades really is south of Tamiami Trail. And I say that it's natural from the standpoint that when water gets into Everglades National Park, south of Tamiami Trail, there are no impediments to flow.

00:20:14:16 - 00:20:33:06
Unknown
There are no water management structures that put water here or move it there. Once it gets to that point. You have a free flowing river of grass. Now to the north of there, you have the remnant Everglades called the water conservation areas.

00:20:33:18 - 00:20:55:12
Unknown
And these are state managed areas that are compartmentalized. They conserve water. They were designed as part of the Central and Southern Florida project. That's our flood control project in South Florida that the Corps of Engineers designed and built through the 50, 60, 72 and so on.

00:20:56:23 - 00:21:22:01
Unknown
They establish the water conservation areas because they knew that recharging the Biscayne Aquifer was important for South Florida's water supply. That Central and Southern Florida project also established the Everglades agricultural area south of Lake Okeechobee. That area of drained muck land that we now farm today primarily for sugar.

00:21:22:12 - 00:21:43:05
Unknown
That was all Everglades wetland. And the reason why those soils were so valuable was because that muck, that organic soil had accumulated over thousands of years. Thousands of years. That soil grew vertically as the Everglades developed over millennia very well.

00:21:43:08 - 00:22:10:15
Unknown
And we know exactly and we know today that draining those soils for agriculture, that that has just had devastating consequences in terms of elevation loss. They've lost an average of about six feet of soil elevation because those organic soils, just like your compost pile, it breaks down when it's exposed to oxygen and drain.

00:22:10:15 - 00:22:34:24
Unknown
Those soils has led to the loss of elevation. But the elevation loss from that standpoint of carbon translates to nearly 100 years of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere as that soil broken down. So bringing this around the climate change today and it's not just the Everglades agricultural area, when we drain the Everglades, when we deprive it of

00:22:34:24 - 00:23:01:20
Unknown
water, those wetlands, they lose elevation and they release carbon to the atmosphere and mass here in the Everglades. These are subtropical peats that are formed over centuries and over millennia by the plants themselves. So it's mostly Sawgrass Peat, but depending on where you are, you can get other plants that contribute to peat formation.

00:23:02:08 - 00:23:20:00
Unknown
Mangroves are a good example of peat formers and so from that standpoint, this is a really rare and unique ecosystem net standpoint, but there aren't a lot of subtropical peatlands like this around the globe. What's the best way to see one of those?

00:23:20:00 - 00:23:42:13
Unknown
Is it or do I like a slogging tour or wading through the Everglades or just visiting the national park and seeing it in the water? All of the above. I think one of the best and easiest ways to see Everglades National Park is to simply make that drive from Florida City to the main park entrance and just

00:23:42:13 - 00:24:03:22
Unknown
make that drive all the way down to the edge of Florida Bay at Flamingo. It's gorgeous. And to see those habitat transitions, they're quite striking when you go from sawgrass to pine to cypress back to Sawgrass, and then suddenly you're in mangroves.

00:24:04:22 - 00:24:22:23
Unknown
And those are all driven by changes in elevation and changes in water quality, mainly salinity as you get closer to the coast. So yeah, I think that's the easiest way to see it. But certainly if you're, you know, would like to really get out and see more of it.

00:24:22:23 - 00:24:40:21
Unknown
Shark Valley has a great bike trail that allows you to get out into Everglades National Park. I think taking a sluice log in Big Cypress National Preserve, that's another area where you can really get up close and personal with some of these places.

00:24:42:12 - 00:24:59:09
Unknown
It seems like all the area south of Tamiami Trail is publicly owned to a certain extent, or most of it is north of Tamiami Trail. It's some of it is publicly owned, but some of it is much of it is privately owned, as you mentioned, through farms and agriculture and other other interests.

00:24:59:22 - 00:25:24:02
Unknown
Tell me about the importance of. Getting private industry to buy into Everglades restoration and the role that they play. Well, I think if we go back to when the Comprehensive Everglades restoration plan was passed in 2000 and and this is really the the the master plan for restoring the flow of water from the lake back to the

00:25:24:02 - 00:25:41:21
Unknown
south. And obviously a lot of infrastructure needed to do that. And when that plan was passed, there was broad support. There was a lot of sort of squabbling over which components were necessary and which should be included in the plan.

00:25:42:05 - 00:26:00:12
Unknown
But there was broad support across different stakeholder groups to get that plan passed and agreed to in Tallahassee and ultimately authorized by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. And I should also note that there was broad bipartisan support as a result.

00:26:00:12 - 00:26:18:06
Unknown
At the time, we had a Republican governor and Jeb Bush and we had a Democratic president and Bill Clinton who all came together to to support Everglades restoration. I think we still have that same broad stakeholder support and certainly broad political support for Everglades restoration.

00:26:18:15 - 00:26:46:19
Unknown
It just comes down to the nuances, the details of some of the projects and which ones are more important from the environmental communities. But if the key project is really the Everglades reservoir, that's short for Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir, the reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee that was authorized in 2018.

00:26:47:08 - 00:27:04:10
Unknown
The Corps has the Army Corps of Engineers has led the first contract on that. The state is building the filtered water treatment marsh associated with it. But there's been some pushback by interest groups on that project because it it takes land out of production.

00:27:04:10 - 00:27:21:21
Unknown
But that land is owned by the state of Florida, leased back to the sugar industry. So I think that, you know, if we can get past those kinds of issues and get those key projects built, we'll certainly see the benefits moving forward.

00:27:21:21 - 00:27:42:23
Unknown
But there's always debate about, you know, the water, where the water should go, whose water is it? We feel that the best and most valuable use of that water going south from Lake Okeechobee is for the ecosystem and for those of us, the millions of us along the East Coast that depend on it for the water supply

00:27:43:18 - 00:27:56:18
Unknown
. Talk to me a little bit more in detail about Everglades restoration. How far along are we, would you say as a percentage, would you say where? About 10 to 15% into a 20% into it? How much money has been allocated and spent on it and how much further do you think we need to go?

00:27:56:24 - 00:28:22:10
Unknown
Well, Everglades restoration, when the plan was first passed, they estimated around 8 billion with a B as we have delayed construction of these projects and that includes the planning and congressional authorization, etc.. The cost has gone up to the point where today estimates are 16 billion, if not more, to complete restoration.

00:28:23:19 - 00:28:42:23
Unknown
It's difficult to say in terms of progress, what percentage, how far along are we? We can look at the funding and say, you know, we've spent several billion dollars already, but it's really almost like a it's not quite additive.

00:28:42:23 - 00:28:59:11
Unknown
It's it's multiplicative in terms of the benefits of these projects. As we get more projects built, we realize the greater value of what they can do collectively in sending flows out. So I think, you know, we could say that.

00:29:00:11 - 00:29:18:23
Unknown
Were were far enough along to where we've got projects crossing the finish line, meaning they're completing. We've got several key projects, including the Everglades that are under construction and we've got a few more projects that are currently being planned that will help to really round out restoration.

00:29:18:24 - 00:29:34:17
Unknown
What we would like to see. And of course, all of this depends on the requisite funding to to complete these projects. We would like to see the bulk, if not all, of Everglades restoration completed by the end of this decade.

00:29:36:03 - 00:29:56:02
Unknown
And one of the most visible, I think, components of Everglades restoration is the Tamiami Trail elevation, where they actually made Tamiami Trail a bridge for several miles between Miami and Naples. Tell me how many miles have been converted into a bridge and what the purpose of that conversion was and how many miles remain to be done?

00:29:57:14 - 00:30:25:15
Unknown
Well, we've got at present about three and a half miles of bridges along Tamiami Trail, and there won't be any more bridges, but there's a road project that's currently being built. If you go west on Tamiami Trail today, west of that intersection with Krome Avenue, you'll see that there's roadwork going on just south of the current roadway

00:30:25:23 - 00:30:52:10
Unknown
of Tamiami Trail and specifically in between the bridges in in between these three bridge segments. And the point there is to build up a new road bed that's higher in elevation than the current one and install more corn spans or box culverts that will supplement what the bridges are able to do at present.

00:30:52:10 - 00:31:14:13
Unknown
And the point of this project, which is called Tamiami Trail. Next steps, phase two is to allow us to raise water levels higher than we can at present to get restoration quantity of flow into that area of Northeast Shark River Slew and Everglades National Park.

00:31:14:14 - 00:31:31:23
Unknown
And we've already seen the benefits and continue to see the benefits of the bridging. But this final project will really allow us to get those water levels up to some restoration quantity where we can deliver much greater benefits to the south all the way to Florida Bay.

00:31:32:02 - 00:31:50:07
Unknown
And that project's expected to be completed by the end of 2024, middle to end of 2024. You mentioned earlier that there's strong bipartisan support for the Everglades today, as there was when it was first proposed. Everglades restoration was first proposed 20 years ago or 2023, 24 years ago.

00:31:50:16 - 00:32:10:09
Unknown
There seems to be strong bipartisan support. What I want to ask you is how can you replicate that strong bipartisan support for other environmental causes and restoration efforts in other parts of Florida, for example, the springs in north Florida that are also a precious ecosystem that are kind of struggling right now.

00:32:10:20 - 00:32:27:10
Unknown
How do you how do you how does how does an organization or how do how do citizens go around trying to garner bipartisan support for certain ecosystems that need restoration in other parts of the state? Well, I don't know that.

00:32:29:01 - 00:32:49:11
Unknown
The same recipe applies in every situation. And admittedly, I'm not nearly as familiar with the Springs issue or some of the other environmental issues in the state of Florida. But I do know that there are few things that resonate broadly.

00:32:50:16 - 00:33:18:22
Unknown
And foremost with the Everglades, it's south Florida's water supply. And when you can tie Everglades restoration with the protection of South Florida's water supply into the future, you've certainly got their attention. We are also able to tie in the economy of South Florida with the health of this ecosystem.

00:33:19:14 - 00:33:41:09
Unknown
And, of course, that resonates when you talk about everything from water supply to real estate values to jobs. And obviously, with the scale of this project, there are a lot of direct jobs associated with it. There are also a lot of indirect jobs that flow from boosting the economy of this region.

00:33:41:23 - 00:34:12:11
Unknown
So those kinds of points strongly resonate. But there's sort of a ground game with Everglades restoration that involves communicating the importance of this ecosystem more broadly in terms of our storm surge protection, the value of coastal mangroves, and providing those ecosystem services that maybe we can assign a dollar value to.

00:34:12:12 - 00:34:41:07
Unknown
But people don't quite understand carbon sequestration across this ecosystem. You need to have consistent messaging on these topics as well. And so we're fortunate enough to have the science backing and and collaborations with other agencies and academic institutions that helps to to maintain that consistent drumbeat, but also helps to amplify our voice on the issue.

00:34:42:10 - 00:34:59:23
Unknown
That all helps. Now, also looking ahead and thinking about the impacts of climate change and sea level rise and the need to build resilience in South Florida, we can couple Everglades restoration, the importance of it with those issues as well.

00:34:59:23 - 00:35:21:09
Unknown
So that further reinforces the need to do that that the that's specific again to this Everglades ecosystem. But those are the types of issues that resonate and help to cross political boundaries, to get that message across in and resulting in broad support or.

00:35:21:23 - 00:35:38:05
Unknown
Steve Davis with me here today, Dr. Steve Davis, the chief science officer for the Everglades Foundation. I see the Everglades Foundation as kind of a pioneer to to make that bipartisan bridge and to build support across communities for for restoration of a certain ecosystem.

00:35:38:05 - 00:35:48:17
Unknown
In this case, is the Everglades one of the most amazing ecosystems in all the world being restored right now? And at the forefront of that is the Everglades Foundation. Steve, thank you for being with us today. Wonderful interview.

00:35:48:24 - 00:36:05:20
Unknown
Thanks. Thanks, Oscar. Really enjoyed it. This episode of The Nature of Florida podcast was brought to you in part by the Everglades Foundation, the Fall Burn Foundation, the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida and Explicou Media. If you're enjoying this podcast, remember to subscribe on our website, The Nature of Florida with Oscar Corral, the Bus, Broadcom.

00:36:05:23 - 00:36:12:23
Unknown
That's the nature of Florida with Oscar Corral, Douglas, Broadcom. Or find us on your favorite platform and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.