Call off the DOGE attack on Florida’s Everglades and its restoration | Opinion
The promise of the first months of the second Donald Trump presidency appears to be that if it doesn’t have huge dollar signs attached to it, Trump cares not at all.
Maybe this can get his attention: Taxpayer commitments to restore the Everglades are more than $20 billion.
Protecting the Everglades and those investments has been supported through bipartisan consensus by generations of elected officials.
Now, with DOGE and President Trump’s demands for across-the-board cuts affecting staff, real estate and science, Florida Everglades’ restoration is falling off the map. Billions of dollars aimed at restoration will go up in smoke unless Trump alters course.
Dozens of jobs have been cut at understaffed national parks and wildlife refuges across the greater Everglades. DOGE operatives are incinerating lease agreements for properties used by hundreds of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees.
DOGE’s actions will strangle the ability of the federal government to complete the restoration work taxpayers and voters demanded and Congress and the state Legislature agreed to.
Trump delegated the day-to-day execution of his big picture to appointees who are, one way or another, connected to Project 2025, DOGE or the Federalist Society.
Over the past month, in the Everglades, great disruption has been triggered in pursuit of so-called “government efficiency.”
Only a stone’s throw from Mar-a-Lago, Trump can witness the fallout as his appointees aim a wrecking ball at the nation’s capacity to respond to environmental crises, modeled by the Everglades.
The Everglades has always been an enormous canvas on which the conflicting interests of commerce and environmental protection are written in broad strokes.
A century ago, Friends of the Everglades founder Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Ernest Coe, an aspiring developer turned Everglades champion, responded to the need to protect the fabled River of Grass.
Public demand helped create Everglades National Park in 1947, a great triumph for Americans.
As the decades passed, the state of Florida, through the South Florida Water Management District, and the federal government, through the Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Interior, began massive engineering and construction projects to restore the Everglades.
Apparently, Trump appears to be ignoring the sacrifice, investment and struggle to restore the Everglades — some 2 million acres reaching across the southern half of Florida’s peninsula.
Now come the DOGE measures without any understanding of the resources and talent required to guide Everglades restoration to a safe landing. Their end game is clear as a philosophical matter and ridiculous as a matter of fact: Let the state of Florida control the destiny of the Everglades.
Environmentalists know that progress made to date on restoring the Everglades has resulted from litigation forcing the state of Florida to comply with federal laws.
Yes, the state of Florida has made billions of dollars of investment in the Everglades. No, the state of Florida cannot be trusted by itself to ensure that science is the polestar of restoration.
Tallahassee and the state Legislature have been overrun by lobbyists, lawyers and billionaires who view the environment as expendable.
Instead of imposing layoffs and lease terminations, Trump should double down on Everglades restoration.
There is an urgent need to acquire and restore about 100,000 acres south of Lake Okeechobee before destructive development takes root on sugarcane fields in the Everglades Agricultural Area.
If safeguarding taxpayer dollars is the goal, there’s no better deal for Trump to broker.
In the meantime, call off the DOGE attack. It’s unwarranted, inefficient and a dishonor to the nation’s commitments to our national parks, treasured by all Americans.
Alan Farago serves as conservation chair for Friends of the Everglades, which was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 6:14 PM.