An Ecological Approach for Restoration of the Everglades Fen

Abstract

One of the monumental environmental achievements in the US over the past 100 years was the consensus reached among local, state, and federal agencies – in addition to the agricultural, conservation, Native American, and development communities – to adopt and endorse the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). Everglades restoration is now well underway, but its success still rests to a major degree on our understanding and successful translation of scientific findings into meaningful restoration guidelines. However, restoration is a young science. Knowledge of how to restore wetland communities and ecosystem components with appropriate surface and subsurface hydrologic conditions and nutrient loadings is limited (Zedler 2000). Thus, disagreements on how to proceed will occur, and mistakes will be made, which means that we must be ready to “alter course” as new data on successes and failures become available. As I often say to my students, wetland restoration is not rocket science – it is far more difficult. The scientific information and recommendations in the previous 25 chapters hopefully will advance the scientific understanding of how the Everglades functions. The volume provides new data, synthesizes key findings and insights into current and past conditions in the Everglades, and quantifies the results of multiyear experiments on responses of plant and animal communities to P dosing, soil disturbance, vegetation removal, and hydrologic and nutrient gradients. Each of the research chapters provides a summary of key findings followed by suggested lessons that may help with restoration, especially in terms of community and organism responses. In addition, we highlight potential problem areas or environmental consequences that need to be considered as specific Everglades restoration plans are implemented. Supported by results from the Duke experiments and gradient studies, I now provide in this summary chapter a more comprehensive ecological approach along with science-based restoration recommendations that should dovetail nicely into the current adaptive planning approach used in CERP and recommended by Zedler (2005). Some of these plans and ideas can already be found in current restoration efforts; however, CERP is not a comprehensive, ecologically based restoration approach based on successional principles or peatland hydrodynamics.