Development Threatens Florida's Ecosystems

"The chief threat to lower Florida's remaining natural lands comes from residential developments like Ave Maria and the tentacles of transportation and commerce that feed them. As Grunwald and others have shown, local governments and developers in southwest Florida are creating new environmental crises faster than the past mistakes made on the other side of the state can be corrected.

[O]ver the past century, thanks to encroachment from the coasts and farming in the interior, the Everglades is down to half its original size. The victim here is the Big Cypress Swamp -- a vast, flat mosaic of cypress forests, wet prairies, pinelands and marshes. The culprit is growth: Collier County, which had a scant 16,000 inhabitants in 1960 and 86,000 in 1980, is now home to almost 350,000 people year-round -- plus an additional 150,000 or so winter residents. Additional throngs of tourists converge on the area from December through February to soak up the warmth.

The area's mainstream environmental organizations gave up long ago on trying to call a total halt to encroachment on undeveloped lands. But as plans have evolved, the amount of landscape to be built up has already almost tripled, and that...is certain to disrupt panther habitat and much more."