Restoring the River of Grass: What 25 Years of Work Has Revealed
- Flamingo Magazine
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
A milestone year for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) brings new momentum—and new hope—to the ecosystem
Flamingo Magazine, December 10, 2025
Steve Davis reaches into crystalline water and pulls out a clump of periphyton, a mixture of algae, microbes, fungi, plant debris and bacteria. It looks like submerged moss, hardly the type of thing that would draw your eye unless you are someone like Davis, chief science officer of The Everglades Foundation.
“When we see this, we know the quality of the water is impeccable,” he says of the mass, an important source of food and oxygen for the life teeming within these waters.
Had Davis been standing in this same spot—a vast wet prairie deep within the Everglades—at the start of his career in 1995, he surely would not have made such a proclamation. The Glades were dying, and along with them, the ecosystems throughout Florida’s lower third, from the wetlands along the Kissimmee River to the seagrass beds of Florida Bay.
Florida’s forefathers had “drained the swamp,” as they called the Everglades, eager to plant farms and build houses, and unaware of the environmental havoc they would unleash.
On Dec. 11, 2000—25 years ago this month—President Bill Clinton authorized the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), one of the largest and most ambitious ecosystem restorations ever undertaken.
It incorporated 68 engineering projects to restore the flow of water through the parched landscape, which is home to 2,000 plant and animal species (68 of which are endangered) and the drinking water source for millions of South Floridians.
The state and federal governments agreed to share the costs and the workload, and appointed the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to lead the endeavor. They also received support from the scientific community, including the Everglades Foundation, which was founded in 1993 to advance Everglades research, policy and public support for restoration.
Read the full Flamingo Magazine article here: https://flamingomag.com/2025/12/10/cerp-everglades-25-years/
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