WEST PALM BEACH, FL—Governor Ron DeSantis approved an additional $1.5 billion toward Everglades restoration and water quality on Earth Day, hoping to resuscitate the most threatened National Park in the United States.
In his first four years in office, DeSantis allocated $3.3 billion toward restoration and water management. In January 2023, he promised that his administration would approve another $3.5 billion in the next four years.
However, in just two years, the Governor has now "knocked out $3.14 billion of the $3.5 billion," he said Monday morning, Earth Day, at the Cox Science Center. "We are not only on track to meet the promise, we are on track to exceed that promise by a country mile."
This means that from the start of his term in January 2019 to the present day, "the state has invested $6.5 billion in Everglades restoration and water management and that's more than any period in the state of Florida's entire history even adjusted for inflation."
Everglades National Park, spanning 1.5 million acres across Southeast Florida, was established in 1947 to curb the increasing natural and human threats to the natural area.
It is now widely considered to be the most threatened National Park in the country, with 39 species federally listed as threatened or endangered, and another 180 plant and animal species considered by the state to be threatened, endangered, or commercially exploited.
To add to the issue, starting in 1900 much of the Everglades has been drained for agriculture and urban development, leaving only 50 percent of the original wetlands remaining.
With $1.7 billion pumped into restoration in the 2024 Fiscal Year, and now an additional $1.5 billion for the 2025 Fiscal Year, the state is hoping to swoop in and protect the Everglades and its surrounding water systems from the decimating threats it has faced over the past century.
