Ocean Sentry
(From guardian.co.uk) Florida – The Everglades are drowning. Canals along Alligator Alley have spilled over banks into roadside swales. Deer have been driven from flooded-out tree islands to strips of dry ground – mostly canal levees, but a few have even been spotted on the porches of empty hunting cabins.
And the water, already near a record high, is still creeping up – particularly in the area of deepest concern: the sprawling sawgrass prairies north of Tamiami Trail. If the water doesn’t recede fast, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission warns deer and other denizens could die in potentially large numbers.
“If we don’t start doing something, we’re going to end up with a total massacre,” said wildlife commissioner Ron Bergeron, who recently took a Democratic US congressman from Florida, Ron Klein, on an airboat trip into the 700,000-acre conservation area west of suburban Miami-Dade and Broward counties, a marsh hammered by high waters over the decades.
It’s not the water depth – which ought to range from 6 to 18 inches depending on location – that presents the biggest problem; it’s duration. With the water up since Tropical Storm Fay seven weeks ago, wildlife managers figure they’ve got less than 30 days before the toll starts mounting.
