Just days before an annual gathering on Everglades restoration that for decades has provided a neutral playing field for politicians, government staff and activists to hash out the complex effort, state and federal officials pulled out of the meeting.
Organizers say they received an email Jan. 21, leaving them scrambling to replace keynote speakers and panelists at the Everglades Coalition conference this week.
"We don't know why they're unable to attend," said conference co-chair and Tropical Audubon Executive Director Lauren Jonaitis. "We just haven't had a response from them."
READ MORE: How the 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention center stirred up a decades-old environmental fight
Keynote speakers for the three-day conference that starts Wednesday included Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Alexis Lambert and Adam Telle, assistant secretary of the army for civil works.
In an email, Jennifer Reynolds, director of ecosystem restoration for the South Florida Water Management District Everglades and former deputy commander for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said district staff won't be attending. When asked why, she did not respond. The Army Corps also did not provide an explanation and FDEP did not respond to requests for comment.
The National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which also regularly send staff to the conference, did not respond to requests for comment.
Over the decades, the conference — with about 55 local, state and national conservation groups — has drawn a wide mix of politicians, government officials, scientists and activists eager to dissect the progress of Everglades restoration. Talks might grow heated about the Everglades, but passions about other political issues usually got tabled. But the last year has tested that balance.
Cuts to the environmental workforce gutted agencies that play a part in restoration, including the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Survey. Attacks on environmental protections including the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, left many feeling defeated.
Tension mounted with opposition to Florida's immigration detention camp in the Big Cypress National Preserve.
After it was erected without environmental reviews typically required for construction on protected land, Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity sued federal officials to shut it down, infuriating Gov. Ron DeSantis. After an appeals court lifted a judge's injunction, DeSantis tweeted: "The mission continues at Alligator Alcatraz. The media was wrong. The leftist judge has been overturned."
One federal official who spoke on background because they were not authorized to talk said the decision to pull out was "ongoing retribution" for anything that opposed White House policies.
"It makes sense that it's all over Alligator Alcatraz," the source said.
On Wednesday, the day government officials backed out of attending, the coalition announced its annual award winners included three people with ties to the detention center lawsuit: Friends executive director Eve Samples, Lake Worth Commissioner and soil scientist Christopher McVoy and activist Jessica Namath. The fourth winner is wildlife photographer Clyde Butcher, who has extensively documented the Big Cypress wilderness.
A panel to discuss Alligator Alcatraz was also included in the conference.
Building support over 41 years
This year marks the conference's 41st year, after Gov. Bob Graham revived an old environmental coalition started in the 1960s to build support for what would become one of the nation's largest ecosystem restoration projects.
Scheduled over three or four days at hotels and resorts around Florida, the conferences provided a reprieve from grinding meetings and a chance for government officials, from Cabinet secretaries to Army Corps colonels, to mingle with wetlands scientists and nonprofit conservation groups over coffee breaks and cocktail hours.
Beginning with Graham and ending with former Gov. Rick Scott, the conference also became an annual pilgrimage for governors to talk about their plans for fulfilling the pledge to fix the Everglades.
When former Everglades czar and Army Corps Col. Terence "Rock" Salt told his staff he wanted to attend in 1991, after he'd begun working on a new comprehensive restoration plan, they warned him not to go.
"I say to my guys, I'd like to help," Salt recalled in an interview with WLRN. They responded: "Colonel, you don't need to go to this. This is a bunch of environmental crazy people and they're going to beat up on the Corps," Salt said. At the time, environmentalists mostly reviled the agency for its dredge and fill work that damaged millions of acres of wetlands across the Everglades.
Salt went anyway, won over critics, and started a tradition of the Corps' attendance.
Officials higher up the Everglades pecking order also routinely attended. Two years after Salt spoke, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt used the conference to unveil his plan for an ecosystem-wide restoration. Former Gov. Jeb Bush appeared in 1999 and pledged his support when it looked like the pact on restoration might splinter. The following year, Bush was at the White House when former President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Last year, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was the conference's keynote speaker.
This year's conference, titled "Everglades Strong: All in for Restoration," opens Wednesday evening in Naples.
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