Miccosukee, hunters worry about proposed protections for Big Cypress
The Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park are part of the Everglades and are crucial to restoring the historic flow of water through the River of Grass.
Yet for decades the federal government has managed these vast swaths of nature very differently — the Big Cypress allows hunting, air-boating and other human impacts that are strictly off-limits in the neighboring national park.
That might change soon in as much as a quarter of the sprawling Big Cypress, a proposal that has broad support from from environmental groups who’ve long sought strong protections in the preserve. But it’s also drawn growing opposition from the people who frequent the preserve — the Miccosukee Tribe, hunters, air-boaters and swamp buggy owners known as “Gladesmen,” and well as both of Florida’s senators.
By all accounts, everyone agrees that Big Cypress — home of rare orchids, dwarf cypress and the increasingly endangered Florida Panther — needs to be protected. The disagreement is in how — and who gets to do the protecting.
“We’re opposing very, very hard right now because we don’t believe this is the right thing for the Big Cypress,” said Curtis Osceola, chief of staff for the Miccosukee Tribe. “The fear from the tribe is that a compromise is being made to put these lands into wilderness at the expense of the rights of the tribe, the rights of the public. We don’t think it’s right.”
Nearly 25,000 people have signed a petition circulated by the tribe urging President Joe Biden to stop the National Park Service from designating large parts of Big Cypress as “wilderness.”
Wilderness is the highest standard of protection by the federal government. It makes it almost impossible to develop the land — which both sides generally support — but also blocks or puts hefty permit requirements in front of things that have been done for decades in the Big Cypress, everything from hunting, riding off-road vehicles or giving airboat tours.
Organizations like the National Parks Conservation Association have long supported wilderness designation in Big Cypress and consider it a powerful tool to slow down oil drilling and hold oil explorers on the land to a higher standard for repairing the damage they left.
“Big Cypress National Preserve is one of our country’s wildest
places. For the sake of the amazing species that make their home in Big Cypress, and the hundreds of thousands of people who visit there every year, we need to keep it that way,” Melissa Abdo, Sun Coast regional director for NPCA, said in a statement.
The upcoming potential designation is based on a report published in 2020 that outlines the National Park Service’s options in designating certain areas of the preserve as wilderness. While the study found about 43% of the nearly 600,000-acre preserve is eligible to be considered wilderness, the “preferred option” would designate only about 25% of the preserve, as well as create more than a hundred miles of new trails.
Because of widespread damage from off-road vehicles, the park service sharply restricted their use in 2011, confining them to specific trails. Private airboats are allowed in some sections of the preserve.
In a statement, Pedro Ramos, Superintendent of Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Park with general oversight of Big Cypress National Preserve and Biscayne National Park, said that he and his team continue to listen to all comments about the potential change and remain in “close consultation” with the tribes.
“In the end, the National Park Service will protect the rights of use and occupancy afforded to the tribes in Big Cypress National Preserve’s enabling act, as well as ensure reasonable recreational access for others compatible with our conservation mission. This
has been a decade-long effort and while we do not expect to complete this process in the next several months, we will continue to make it a priority for the benefit of our visitors,” he wrote.
Traditional tribal areas
But the tribe, and other outdoor organizations, worry that this designation will also block them from accessing Big Cypress in the way they have for generations.
Much of Everglades National Park is designated as wilderness. When that happened, the tribal petition reads, it “resulted in the forced removal of Miccosukee and Seminole traditional villages and the stealing of their 99,200-acre reservation.”
Now, Osceola said, the Miccosukee need permission from Everglades National Park to access the wilderness areas of the park, where they still have some designated ceremonial spots.
The tribe’s concern is that designating any area of Big Cypress as wilderness would upset the tribe’s current unfettered access to all of the land to hunt, fish, bury their dead, celebrate ceremonies and forage for medicine, like the leaves of the swamp bay.
Osceola said there’s no compromise to be found in picking and choosing the areas the tribe wants to access versus spots they would accept a wilderness designation, both because climate change and rising waters mean the areas they need to hunt or pick medicine in are already changing, and because they don’t trust future generations of government to keep their promise to the tribe.
“We’re natives. We have been on the land for time immemorial. We’ve always subsisted and stewarded the lands and we will continue to do so,” Osceola said. “For us, the land, If you’re not in it, if you’re not among it, how could you understand it? How could you truly cure what ails it?”
Generations of Gladesmen
Mike Elfenbein, executive director of the Cypress Chapter of the Izaak Walton League, said he’s concerned that a wilderness designation would block Gladesmen who have lived and recreated in Big Cypress for generations from continuing to do so.
In wilderness-designated places like Everglades National Park, visitors can’t use off road vehicles or anything mechanical to access back country spots, which could make hunting things like deer and turkey in Big Cypress — a preserve the size of Rhode Island with very few roads crossing through it — much more of a challenge.
“It doesn’t make hunting illegal, it makes it so difficult that the average person doesn’t bother,” he said.
But his biggest concern, even bigger than whether hunters and off road vehicle riders can access Big Cypress, Elfenbein said, is how the preserve is protected.
He worries that a wilderness designation would block anyone but park service staff from quickly managing controlled wildfire burns or invasive species, which are legion, due to lengthy permit wait times.
“As it is already, the National Park Service is incapable of meeting the needs of the system. Always short-staffed or short-funded, can’t burn as much as they need to burn, can’t keep up with invasive species,” he said.
His concerned are echoed in letters to the federal government from Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Chairman Rodney Barreto and Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Shawn Hamilton.
“In light of these concerns, we respectfully request that you do not move forward with any proposed wilderness designation that will hinder the proper management of public access and natural resources within the Big Cypress National Preserve,” wrote Scott and Rubio.