To suggest draining such a vital natural landscape and replacing its inhabitants with "friendly" animals ignores the intricate interdependencies that sustain these ecosystems. This not only threatens extinction of unique species but undermines the health of the entire region, affecting millions of people who rely on its ecosystem services. Demanding nature conform to a sanitized or human-safe version reflects a narrow, anthropocentric arrogance.
The wildness of the Everglades is part of its profound purpose and beauty. Any view that diminishes this is reductive, environmentally ignorant, and ethically troubling. Nature is not a backdrop to human desires but a living system demanding protection, understanding, and awe.
Ah, yes, terrible consequences, such as, the irrigation and suitability for farmland of central California, the lack of frequent flooding of the Mississippi river and tributaries and the present dryness of the Netherlands.
I don't think draining the everglades is tractable and I think it's more valuable as is since you're not gonna out farm the midwest. But it's really easy to be on a high horse and not appreciate the successful projects that we benefit from the results of.
_The Great River_ by Boyce Upholt from last year is a good place to start learning about the Mississippi.
Fun story: I was slaloming bank to bank down that canal and wiped out. The canal is narrow enough the boat has to slow down and idle around the u-turn to then plane up to get back, so it takes a bit. There was a high arched water pipe over the canal and a kid parked on the apex. Kid sez, there's a gator next to you. I said, sure, right kid. Kid sez, there's a gator next to you... and I look and yep, maybe a 6', 7' gator about 10' away. Well... not much to do... I started waving the ski and a couple of minutes later they throw me the rope and I orientated and up and away I went. ha haha. Good times. I think I was 15.
Another one: Buddy of mine is on two skis and is kinda mellowing out just running down that same canal and I'm driving and see a gator ahead in the middle of the canal, and why not, I steer around the gator and then steer him right over it and it explodes in a huge splash ha aha haar I am just laughing at the memory and he looks back and then back at me with a big shit eating grin. I was probably 16.
Same canal: I got this hot gf I'm trying to teach to ski and she's fiddling with the skis, as you do starting out, and a nice 5' tarpon rolls about 6' away from her. Panic! We're like no no no they do not bite, it's just a tarpon, they're friendlies! Oh well, no water skiing for her. I was... 17.
But I'm not here to tell you these stories. I'm here to talk about the river of grass, the Everglades. Many millions have lived around the periphery but you can look at maps and see it's a long way across with "nothing" there. How would you see the vast scope of the interior, in an efficient way, right down at water level?
Family 2 doors over in Melaleuca Isles (still exists, I see) the father was the district superintendent (I think) for the Florida Fish & Game Commission, or whatever it's called these days. In those days the US was a normal country and everybody hung out, the kids, the parents. So I'm over there in the morning and he says want to go on patrol. I say sure. So we drive the airboat out to the launch point on 84 (Alligator Alley) and off we go. This thing had a Lycoming flat six and there's not much to the boat but the Al flat hull, the two tier seats, and the enormous engine and propeller. And for 5 hours, at speeds peaking at 100mph[1], we criss cross the entire sector of the Everglades north of Hghwy 84. I stopped counting deer in the sawgrass in the water at 100. The vistas were of an endless prairie of sawgrass. He drove across the hammocks where there was grass by just powering the boat onto the land and then over.
I came away from that experience with a full appreciation of the scope of the Everglades, the idea of it, and am sad that the idea of wilderness has softened like melting fat into an ideal of a warm cozy unthreatening warm bath. There is nothing that can be accurately described as wilderness unless organisms endemic there are present and may be out to eat you. Starting with mosquitos and ending with alligators.
[1] In those medieval times we did not know nor understand the term "eye protection" and so I had none, though my neighbor did. He didn't care. At 100mph your face is quite distorted. Some debris is getting through the screen on the front of the boat. What a MF adventure.