Sam Accursio’s April 20 opinion piece, Focus on endangered bird harms Florida Bay, correctly laments the poor water quality of Florida Bay and rightly attributes its cause to the lack of fresh water flowing south through the Everglades.

We all know this. Water management in the Everglades has been a man-made disaster for decades. Accursio then proceeds to blame the situation on 13 sparrows that live in the southwest portion of the park. What a convenient scapegoat for the Water Management District’s failings over all these years.

He implies that they are dying off anyway, so let’s get on with progress. When they open up the floodgates, soggy sparrow bodies hang from the sawgrass and Florida Bay is still a dead zone, whom is he going to blame next?