Germann, camping in the park the week of December 15th with his wife Ellen, is among the vanguard of an estimated 800,000 seasonal tourists, many of them European, who in the next five months will drive or boat into the largest national park in the eastern U.S. And as he meanders through the saw grass, peering down at soft-shelled turtles and foot-long garfish that hang motionless at his feet, Germann says that what he has seen of the vast wetland on this visit looks like what he remembers when he first came eleven years ago.
But behind the scenes, Everglades National Park is in trouble. Park buildings are dilapidated; trucks, tractors, and other equipment are falling apart; exotic species -- melaleuca trees and wild boar, for example -- are multiplying; and rangers and police and fire protection are stretched thin. "Visitors don't know we are in dire straits," admits park Superintendent Maureen Finnerty. "That's the good news -- they are happy. But from the inside we see enormous problems."
The problems of which Finnerty speaks go beyond the much-publicized woes of pollution and ecosystem degradation being targeted by the eight-billion-dollar restoration project. The 30-year plan to restore the flow of fresh water to historic patterns is called the world's biggest replumbing job, and ultimately will determine whether the Everglades survives as a designated World Heritage Site or becomes a landfill and then a site for a Wal-Mart Supercenter (a big one).
No, Finnerty's concerns are more immediate. "We need another $10 million a year to run this park in the way it should be run," she says. "And in this budget climate, it's doubtful we're going to get it."
Indeed to cope with an unprecedented budget crunch, on the eve of the park's high season, managers have quietly made some drastic changes: cutting back on ranger-led tram tours, canoe trips, and walks; canceling scores of environmental programs; and closing down some recreation areas inside the park, including Chekika, the campground at the west end of SW 168th Street. At the same time, Finnerty and other park officials have begun to speak candidly about the condition of many park facilities. Their word: "shabby."
"The exteriors of many park facilities are 'shabby' and have been the subject of numerous visitor complaint letters," according to a 30-page business plan that documents the park's financial malaise. "The erosion of funding for maintenance programs has all but eliminated routine maintenance of buildings, trails, and roads."
Nowhere is shabbiness more apparent than at Flamingo, the campground and recreation area on Florida Bay, 35 miles south of Homestead. Here, where the Florida Peninsula peters out, the park operates a restaurant and a 102-room motel that was built in the 1950s and is usually sold out over winter weekends despite antique plumbing and furnishings so funky as to appeal only to hard-core birders-- who are too obsessed to care -- and time-trippers nostalgic for the Eisenhower era. Throw in Flamingo's decaying outdoor toilets, dingy visitor center, primitive outdoor movie theater, and tiny gift store-cum-bait shop and you've got a vacation experience so retro, confess park officials, that visitors "are unable to partake in substantive learning and enjoyment ..."
This year Everglades National Park has a base budget of just over $14 million, of which 86 percent goes to pay the salaries of the park's 230 full-time employees. That leaves just two million dollars for facilities maintenance, fire and police protection, visitor programs, control of exotic plant species, and upgrades to equipment and water and sewage treatment plants. "The park is suffering," laments the red-haired Finnerty, who has spent 30 of her 58 years with the National Park Service and was named superintendent here in September 2000. "People have the perception that we're rich because of the money for restoration. But most of that eight billion dollars goes to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."
When President Bush joined Finnerty for a sweaty early-June photo-op in the River of Grass in 2001, he mentioned the uniqueness of alligators and crocodiles living side by side, made a joke about his hopes that Republicans and Democrats could do likewise, and voiced support for preserving the Glades. But that endorsement did not translate to any congressional boost in the operating budget.
Part of the problem is that despite its ecological rarity and diversity, Everglades National Park is not all that popular in comparison with some other big parks in the federal system. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for example, drew 9.1 million visitors last year. More than 4 million went to Grand Canyon National Park, almost 3.5 million each to Olympic National Park and Yosemite.
