Navigating the Labyrinth of Definition America's greatest national parks evoke patriotic images of rustic, romantic beauty with their magnificent waterfalls, breathtaking gorges and grizzly bear sightings. These national treasures are thriving emblems of American history and tradition, to which more than forty million travelers to our country's national parks can attest. Yet, how often do tourist bureaus sing the praises of a park's deep, soggy swamps and grasses? Everglades National Park, the second largest national park in the continental United States that encompasses 2,150 square miles of wetlands and submerged lands at the southern end of the Florida peninsula, does not at first glance resemble the "national treasure" definition of a park. Because visitors tend to remember their bugs and marshes, rather than their "unique" history and "subtle" beauty, The Everglades have traditionally inspired less public devotion than other nationally treasured parks like Yellowstone, and have suffered from irrigation tactics that diverted necessary water flow from needful habitat. Everglades National Park has continuously battled decline since its official establishment in 1947, earning it the tragic title of one of the country's ten most endangered parks. Since the beginning, The Everglades have steadily faced hurdles of definition. The dictionary definition of "Everglade" describes "a tract of low swampy land covered with tall grass," yet the word stems from an obsolete definition of "glade," meaning "bright or sunny." Located in the back country of Florida, the labyrinth of mangrove trees that constitutes Everglades National Park leads visitors to the Sunshine State through dead ends and cul-de-sacs. Travelers may tour exotic locales like Flamingo, Coral Gables, or Ponce de Leon Bay, or they may trek through Shark River Slough, Crocodile Sanctuary or Hell's Bay. A paradox in appearance and content, the park cannot be succinctly labeled to please everyone: Is it a swamp to be drained, a wilderness to be avoided, a watershed to tap, or an ecosystem to cherish and preserve? However, while the people of South Florida cannot find a consistent, coherent definition or approach to their Everglades, one aspect remains clear enough: for more than 110 years, human needs have devastated The Everglades. As home to more than 600 kinds of animals and 900 plant species, The Everglades have merited the titles of International Biosphere Reserve, an United Nations World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Significance; yet ninety percent of the original wading bird population, including the Wood Stork and the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker, which constitutes more than one third of the park's natural inhabitants, has been destroyed by water control plans. In addition to the fourteen species of animals--including the American crocodile, the Southern Bald Eagle, the Snail Kite and the Loggerhead turtle, all of which have been classified as either threatened or endangered--other affected animals whose ranges extend beyond the park have lost their critical habitat. The political history of this unique wilderness park has been troubled since the 1840's, when Florida's first state legislature labeled The Everglades as "valueless" and appealed to Congress to drain them and start over! In 1905, Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward began the process of having it dredged and ditched so he could build his never-quite-successful "Empire of the Everglades." However, things started to look a little better during the 1920's, when Ernest Coe, a New England Landscape Architect, moved to Miami and became enamored by the "peculiar and biologically diverse" Everglades. He helped establish the Everglades National Park Association, became its director, and declared himself its missionary for a restoration project. Coe's original two million-acre national park plan was too bold to be implemented, but it proved prophetic of other apparently devastatingly "bold" plans for the region. What remains of The Everglades would probably devastate Ernest Coe. The entire ecosystem of the park has been strained to the point of crisis by the demands of Southern Florida. Under federal instructions, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USCOE) has dredged, diked and diverted the flow of water for farmland and flood control, and has dried out the land for new businesses and to supply freshwater to Southern Florida. Consequently, since the 1940's, the water control system of more than 1,400 canals and levees has destroyed more than fifty percent of the wetlands habitat of the park, and has damaged what is left. Finally, after years of indecision and controversy, the citizens and leaders of South Florida have committed themselves to the idea of restoring The Everglades. In 1978, the South Florida Research Center was established to study the hydrologic flow projects from upstream that have been the most effective in destroying the natural habitat; last year, Secretary of Interior Babbitt established a federal task force to guarantee that remedying the situation is a Clinton administration priority. Despite the fact that there remains no clear definition of "everglade restoration," and the billions-of-dollars price tags attached to the project, environmentalists hope that the USCOE and other federal and state agencies involved in Everglades restoration will endorse this largest environmental restoration in the world. On November 30,1994, the federal government proposed "The Restudy," a massive "replumbing" of much of South Florida to save The Everglades, unveiling the land planning and engineering focus of what is probably the most ambitious environmental restoration project ever attempted. A "Restudy" team consisting of members from the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service assisted the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to compile a 1,945 page report that outlined options for restoring the forty to fifty years of hydrological damage to these large and biologically productive marshes. The major goal of the Reconnaissance Report is to remove some of the region's surface plumbing (canals, levees and spillways) in order to restore the natural flow of water and save the precious ecosystem. The addition of proposed, large water reserve areas between Biscayne Bay and Everglades National Park could also provide a more secure water supply to Florida's metropolitan areas and could therefore attract political support from developing interests. The Reconnaissance Report released by the SFWMD and the USCOE has basically defined the region by virtue of its contents: water built the South Florida ecosystem, water management changes have destroyed this ecosystem, and restoration will begin with the reinstatement of the natural distribution of water. David Unsell, SFWMD's "Restudy" Coordinator for USCOE projects, agrees that the competition for water between environmental, agricultural and urban demands has slowed down the fundamental process of defining the reasons behind restoring the region: "Bugs and bunnies don't vote, so they're probably getting the short end of the stick." As a result of land use and water management practices during the past 100 years, the defining characteristics of the wetlands have been lost or substantially altered; the premise of this study is that these defining characteristics provide a necessary focus for setting restoration goals and priorities. The USCOE is currently working on its proposal for the "1135 Project" (which stemmed from Section 1135 of Congress' 1986 Water Restrictions Development Act), a project that proposes to degrade Levee 28 so that water can flow through it. In addition, as part of the Everglades Forever Act, plans are in the works to improve the quality of storm water run-off that will restore balance to the fragile ecosystem. While these individual plans are only minuscule portions of the entire restoration process, they constitute good faith to the community and commitment to the Reconnaissance Report on the part of the USCOE. The ecological goal of the SFWMD Reconnaissance Report, currently undergoing a four-year Feasibility Study, is to recreate and restore the "plumbing" of the region so that it can survive the natural cycles of droughts, floods and hurricanes and can support large and sustainable communities of native vegetation and animals. Twenty-five percent of the feasibility evaluation will be performed by SFWMD, while the remaining seventy-five percent will be completed by consultants to the USCOE. Although getting people to love a swamp has traditionally proved to be a challenge, the uniqueness of the wilderness of The Everglades has proven to be reason enough to restore it. Once the essence of the region itself has been properly defined, the essential solution to preserving the unique ecology of The Everglades will be defined as well.